
MAR 9 ^*^^ 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. ._ Copyright No.. 

Sheif.EX^.34 

^ N^ :^ 

i 1 ' I V 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






ai^^r^ 



A TREATISE 



UPON 



Baptist Church Jurisprudence; 

OR THE 

COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL, 

CRITICALLY AND SCIENTIFICALLY CONSIDERED; 

ILLUSTRATING THE WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN LAWS OF TRUE APOSTOLIC CHURCH 
GOVERNMENT. BEING A DISCUSSION OF THE PRINCIPAL QUES- 
TIONS INCIDENT TO THE GOVERNMENT AND 
POLITY OF BAPTIST CHURCHES. 



BY / 

EDWARD P. 'MARSHALL, 

Attoeney-at-Law. 




WASHINGTON, D. C. : 

THE COLUMBIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1898. 
L 



TWO C^Pftt W«eiVEO 






2764 

Entered According to the Act of Congress, in the Year A.D. 1897, 

By EDWARD P. MAESHALL, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



Of coNe»"»' 



THIS VOLUME 



RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 



THE AUTHOR, 



BAPTIST MINISTRY 



THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

As to those whose feet are shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace, and who 
have been miraculously preserved and perpetuated in every age and century, since 
the commencennent of the Christian Era, keeping pure the doctrine and 
ordinances of the churches of Christ, as the most effective class of 
persons to aid in bringing back a large part of the- Christian world 
to the first principles of apostolic church g,overnment, and 
enlightening and preparing public opinion for such re- 
forms as the exigencies of Christianity demand, 
and to arrest the downward course of a 
well-meaning, though, neverthe- 
less, a priest-ridden people. 



FUNDAMENTAL BIBLE PRINCIPLES. 



For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by 
nature the things contained in the law, these having not 
the law, are a law unto thennselves. Which shew the work 
of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bear- 
ing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing, or 
else excusing one another. Do ye not know that the saints 
shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by 
you, are you unworthy to judge the snnallest matters? 
Know ye not that we shiall judge angels ? how much more, 
things that pertain to this life? Doth not nature itself 
teach you ? Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not 
what is right? All things are law unto me, but all things 
are not expedient. All things are lawful for me, but I will 
not be brought under the power of any. Thy law is in my 
heart, i will put my law in their mind. I will put my law 
in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts. Give me 
understanding, and 1 shall keep thy law, yea 1 shall observe 
It with my whole heart. But even if any man seem con- 
tentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of 
God. Thy word is law. 

THE BIBLE. 



PREFACE 



THE primary aim of the author in the present volume is not to attempt to 
unsettle any heretofore recognized principles of Baptist church polity, nor 
to supply any entirely new method of obtaining reasoned answers to ecclesiastical 
questions; but rather by careful reflection to introduce greater clearness and 
consistency into the kind of thought and reasoning with which every intelligent 
Baptist is more or less familiar. In order to arrive at sound and correct conclu- 
sions on practical questions much detailed knowledge is needed, which the general 
theory of ecclesiastical government professes to give ; it can only point out the 
nature of this further knowledge, and the sources from which it is to be obtained. 

The general theory of Baptist church jurisprudence ought to classify the con- 
siderations by which any given question should be decided, and indicate their 
general bearing on the question under consideration ; but the degree of weight to 
be attached to each species of consideration, in any particular case, has mostly to 
be learned from experience ; so that the main practical use of the theory of Baptist 
church government is to show how experience is to be acquired in this the most 
peculiar of all church polities. 

So wide, and so flagrant has been the departure from the true form of apostolic 
church government, by the various religious communities now extant in the world, 
that the author of the following work has undertaken to correct some of the errors 
which have led the Catholic and Protestant world astray. The subject of Baptist 
church government is a noble science, and one that has not hitherto been treated 
with all the care it deserves. The greater part of our own people have, therefore, 
only a vague and incomplete, and often a very false notion of it. 

When we reflect that there is no legislative body known among Baptists to 
enact ecclesiastical laws, and no high court of appeals to interpret those laws, we 
can readily see the necessity of supplying this want in Baptist literature. The 
subject has not been treated from the standpoint of theology, but is purely gov- 
ernmental in its nature. I have contented myself with simply laying down the 
general rules and principles, which the law of Baptist churches furnishes for the 
guidance of those who are charged with its execution. A particular detail of the 
doctrine and discipline of the churches belongs to history, and not to a systematic 
treatise upon ecclesiastical government proper. Our denominational literature is 
abundantly supplied with valuable works of this kind, by authors preeminently 
fitted in every respect for the task, to destroy which, would be like removing the 
ancient landmarks of landed property, or tearing down the beacon lights along 
the shores of our great commercial waterways. 

The author, in addressing himself to the task before him, has been constantly 
sensible of the fact that he is treading upon holy ground when he presumes to treat 
a subject so sacred as that of the government of the churches of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ ; but in a science like this, owing to the peculiar form of Baptist 
church polity, the only resort we have to find out what is true church law, is the 

5 



b PREFACE. 

Bible itself, — the great fountain of all law, — as it is interpreted by our eminent 
commentators and text-writers, which, to be binding, the law must have passed 
under the scrutiny of the churches, as well as those learned in such matters. In 
other systems, a work like this would be comparatively useless, because their books 
of discipline and digests are already loaded down with thousands of decisions and 
precedents, coming down from their various courts of appeal ; and he who would 
ignore these adjudications, and appeals to theory, or general principles laid down 
by text- writers, must not expect to receive any great attention. 

I have tried to not invade the domain of the ecclesiastical legislator, but to 
keep within the sphere of the true commentator, a thing hard to do, as every 
lawyer knows. Hence, the work is not what the author has himself made it, but 
is a faithful recital of what the law already is. These principles never could have 
been compiled before there was a consensus of usage respecting them. It is not a 
fruitless research after church law which does not yet exist, but a record of what 
has been evolved by the churches in the past. It is not binding upon the churches 
only in so far as it is intrinsically Scriptural and voluntarily accepted by the 
churches ; for he who would attempt to collect and record the customs and usages 
of Baptist churches, should be the apostle of the truth, and not the inventor of 
rules, or systems. 

For the past twenty years I have been reading, compiling, observing, thinking, 
reflecting, and, at intervals, writing upon this subject, especially in its bearing 
upon church government, without taking any notes of the sources from "whence 
the materials were derived. I have taken many things bodily from the labors of 
eminent writers, which have long since become, as it were, common property, and 
have used their thoughts, as far as I have judged them sound and Scriptural, and 
they came within the scope of this work. But from whence I have borrowed, my 
readers know as well as I. 

This work, now finished and offered to the public, is based upon scientific 
principles, but I am fully conscious that I have not, for the want of sufficient skill, 
succeeded in treating the subject scientifically. I have been compelled, in many 
cases, to depend upon my own judgment, and to draw conclusions as to what is 
true ecclesiastical law, not from actual custom and usage, but fi-om the deductions 
of common sense, and especially from the analogies of the civil law, as practiced 
in courts of justice, which I have found so useful to me in my work. 

It is not, therefore, surprising that in this want of light — this being the first 
attempt to reduce the principles of true apostolic church government, from a Bap- 
tist standpoint, to a systematic science — I should have fallen short, and sometimes 
doubtless erred in judgment. In fact the work can lay claim to very little artistic 
skill. It is full of repetitions, the same thought often recurring. But whatever it 
wants in skill and methodical arrangement, I try to make up in earnestness, and 
honesty of purpose. 

I write throughout as a Baptist, for the work is intensely denominational, 
but I must be permitted to say that I have not unnecessarily obtruded Baptist 
views upon the reading public, except in the light of what I conceive to be the 
true form of ecclesiastical polity. While I dedicate the work to the Baptist min- 
istry of America, and through them to the Baptist denomination, I hope that others 
will do me the honor to read it. Especially do I ask the ministry, should they 
deem the. book worthy, to assist in its circulation, for which I will feel grateful. 

Edwaed p. Marshall. 
Washington, D. C, December, a.d. 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Of the Fundamental Elements and Functions of Ecclesiastical Polity. 9 



CHAPTEE II. 
View of the Origin and Organization of the Churches, and the True 

Nature of Apostolic Church Government 42 

CHAPTER III. 
The Local Church, a Divine Institution, and the only Depository of 

Ecclesiastical Power 74 

CHAPTER IV. 
Baptist Church Customs and Usages ; or, The Common Law of the Gospel. 107 

CHAPTER V. 
Baptist Church Jurisprudence ; Its Eelation to Church Government . . 133 

CHAPTER YI. 
Baptist Church Jurisprudence ; How it Becomes Trustworthy in Church 
Government through the Medium of the Interpretation of the 
Scriptures 164 

CHAPTER VII. 
Ecclesiastical Precedents and Traditions; Their Relation to Church 

Government 194 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Baptist Church Ethics in General, and some Eules in Particular ... 218 

CHAPTER IX. 

Ecclesiastical Councils; Their Powers and Duties 249 

7 



8 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 

PAGE 

The CnrECH Univeesal, not a Church Proper and Cannot be the Seat 

OF Instituted Church Government 278 

CHAPTEE XI. 
Baptist Associations and Conventions ; Their Eelation to the Churches. 309 

CHAPTER XTI. 

Ecclesiastical Creeds; How they are Generated, and their Use and 

Abuse in Church Government 340 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Of the Nature of Ecclesiastical Heresy, and How it Should be Treated 

in Church Government 365 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Christian Ministry ; Their Call, Ordination, Powers and Duti-es . 390 

CHAPTER XV. 
Equality of the Christian Ministry Asserted 419 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Baptist Church Divisions ; or. The Separation of One Part of a Church 

FROM the Other : . . . 451 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Property Eights of a Divided Baptist Church ; The Common Law Eules 

Governing Same 484 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Papal Church Government; In which the Office and Functions of a 

Pope is Challenged 512 



A TREATISE 



UPON 



BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE 



CHAPTER I. 

OF THE FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS AND FUNCTIONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL 

POLITY. 

BA-PTIST church jurisprudence, as the term is here used, may be held 
to include the entire domain of the powers, rights and duties of Bap- 
tist churches which come within the province of ecclesiastical government, 
law, ethics and decorum. It is a legal term, but used in its broadest signifi- 
cation, is not improper to be employed in this connection, combining as it does, 
the principles of ecclesiastical polity with the infinite variety of ethical rules 
governing the churches of Christ. If dignity and importance can properly 
be attributed to a word, there are in our day few words more dignified and 
more important than Jurisprudence in the sense used herein. With this 
meaning, jurisprudence enters into a great deal of modern thought, whether 
applied to a legal system, governmental polity, or a system of modern phil- 
osophy. I wish it to be understood in the outset, however, that the term 
does not include so wide a circle as to embrace either the history or theology 
of Baptist churches, leaving those vast subjects to be treated by the church 
historian and the theologian. Church history rests upon facts, theology 
upon divine truth; while church jurisprudence is under the government of 
laws which spring from the positive institution of the churches of God. It 
illustrates the nature and mutability of what I am pleased here to call the 
Common law of the gospel, and the eternal obligation of the divine law of 
God, as applied to Baptist church government. 

As to the Common law of the gospel, it may be defined to be a collection 
of ethical rules of decorum recognized by the members of a church without 
any positive interference of ecclesiastical legislation. As there is no such 
thing in Baptist church jurisprudence as a legislative body, next to the 
written gospel itself, the common law springing out of the written word of 
God is the most plentiful source of rules governing the actual conduct of 

9 



10 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

Baptist churclies. Let it be recalled that this peculiar kind of church law 
was expanded and developed in the beginning, not at all, by ecclesiastical 
legislation, but by a process which we see still in operation in the various 
Baptist churches of to-day — that is by the authoritative interpretation of the 
Scriptures by successive churches and the commentaries of men learned in 
those sacred writings. 

Whatever there is that is true in Baptist church jurisprudence, is an 
accretion of rules which have thus sprung up and clustered around the Holy 
Scriptures, and consists of them, and of accumulations formed upon them. 
And it is further certain that the process by which these accumulations were 
formed was by the authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures by the 
churches, and that none of the agencies by which church law is made in 
other systems came into play. Hence, Baptist church jurisprudence is not, 
in any sense, a legislative construction, and thus it is an authentic monument 
of Christ's government on earth ; but it is also a collection of rules which 
have gradually developed in a way highly favorable to the preservation of 
the ancient faith and practice of the gospel. 

Two causes have done much to obscure this apostolic form of government : 
one has been the formation of strong, centralized systems of polity, and 
concentrating in themselves all ecclesiastical power, giving to that form of 
government upon occasion a special form of legislative authority ; the other 
has been the in'fluence, direct and indirect, of ecclesiastical high -courts and 
other governing tribunals, drawing with them an activity in church legisla- 
tion unknown to the apostolic churches which were never subjected to it. 
Under these circumstances it is not wonderful that Baptist church jurispru- 
dence, without this agency, has grown up and become the wonder of all who 
take the pains to study its growth and development. 

Apostolic church government, after which Baptists have patterned, and to 
which they adhere with religious tenacity, may be described as the greatest 
achievement which has ever been made since the dawn of civilization. Its 
influence upon the religion, the laws, the customs and usages of the liberty- 
loving nations of t^e earth has really been immense, and is destined soon to 
penetrate every nation under the sun. It is natural, therefore, that it 
should afford matter for deep contemplation, and that it should excite intense 
interest wherever its genius and tendency is known. The study of the 
principles underlying this peculiar system of church government ought to 
attract the notice of every cultivated and reflecting Baptist, and should not 
be treated with coldness and the pedantry of antiquated research. 

The Baptists of the United States are a people who love the old paths ; 
we pride ourselves upon belonging to that succession of churches which had 
their beginning in the establishment of the first church at Jerusalem ; we 
are able to see the visible and unmistakable traces of the principles and 
doctrines of that first church in the Baptist churches of to-day ; we can look 
back througjh the centuries gone by, and rejoice at their growth and devel- 
opment; all of which make us proud that we are Baptists. And if this 
peculiar system of church government proves anything, in its comparison 



OR, THE COMMOif LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 11 

with that set up by the apostles, it shows clearly that a people and a system 
of churches have existed since the days of the apostles holding the doctrines 
and principles now promulgated by the great Baptist family of the earth, 
while many other systems have arisen and passed away, notwithstanding 
thoy had every human stay and prop to carry them on to ultimate success. 
A denomination that loves this system can do nothing better to promote the 
object of its love than deeply to study it, and in order to be able to do this, 
it is necessary to analyze it, and to trace the threads which compose the 
valued texture. 

A church could not exist without government of some sort. As a church 
is necessary to receive and to preach the gospel and to keep it pure ; so gov- 
ernment is a necessity of the church to keep it within the bounds and limits 
marked out by Christ, its great founder and head. If it had no govern- 
ment it would fail for want of unity and continuity of faith and practice. 
The gospel could not be preached with efficacy and power ; Christians could 
not be indoctrinated, trained and educated without some degree of ecclesi- 
astical government— of some authority to direct, restrain and control. But 
its office is not purely repressive, to administer discipline and to rectify 
wrongs. It has something more to do than to restrict our liberty, to curb 
our passions and to settle differences between member and member. Church 
government would be necessary if none of these matters ever presented 
themselves for settlement ; it is needed for the good more than it is for the 
bad. Government is needed in Heaven as well as on earth. It is needed 
to combine and unite men in one living organic body, and to strengthen all 
with the strength of each, and each with the strength of all. Still more 
apparent is the necessity of church government when we consider it in rela- 
tion to the whole denomination, composed of many churches, all of which we 
hope fully to demonstrate before we shall have gone over the whole ground 
of this treatise. 

There are those who clamor that there is no such thing as Baptist 
church polity, because it could not be produced in full written form, emana- 
ting from some august ecclesiastical council, like that of the constitution of 
the United States, or, if you please, like that of the Episcopal, Methodist, or 
Presbyterian churches. And the same cavil is occasionally repeated by 
Baptists who have not taken the pains to study the true form of Bible 
church government. But an impartial and earnest investigator, seeking 
after truth, may soon satisfy himself that Baptists have a constitution and 
form of church government beautiful beyond description, and that there is 
ample cause why we should understand and cherish it. And by this it is 
meant that we will recognize and admire in the history, the laws, and the 
institutions of the Baptists, certain great leading principles which have 
existed from the earliest founding of the churches, by the apostles, down to 
the present time, expanding and adapting themselves to the spiritual pro- 
gress of the denomination, advancing and varying in development, but still 
essentially the same in substance and in spirit with the apostolic churches, 
as we see them reflected in the Bible. These great primeval and enduring 



12 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDKN'CE ; 

principles are the basis of the churches to which we belong. And, indeed, 
we are not obliged to learn them from imperfect evidences or precarious 
speculations, for they are imperishably recorded in the New Testament 
Scriptures connected with and confirmatory of the Holy Record itself, at 
an epoch which we have a right to consider the very commencement of 
Baptist churches, and in this sacred record we can trace these great princi- 
ples, some in the germ, it is true, some more fully revealed. And thus, at 
the very dawn of the history of Baptist church government, we behold the 
foundations of our great ecclesiastical institutions imperishably laid, which 
it will be our pleasure here to trace. 

Every intelligent Baptist reader should be very charitable tov/ards him 
w^ho would attempt to evolve a system of government and ethical rules for 
the use of Baptist churches ; for to discern the common law of the gospel, 
and the law of reason deducible therefrom, is very hard. As to the cer- 
tainty of this science, it has been an established persuasion amongst the gen- 
erality of learned men that a treatise upon any kind of government is desti- 
tute of that certainty which is found especially in the science of mathe- 
matics. The foundation of this notion has been that they have taken 
government to be incapable of accurate demonstration, from whence only 
true science, free from the fear of error, can proceed ; and they imagine that 
all its evidence rises no higher than probable opinion, arising from the fact, 
doubtless, that all governments seem to be only instituted by law, and 
originally not decreed by nature. But this view of the subject puts Bap- 
tist church polity upon a high plane — almost as high as if it had been 
decreed by nature. Among those governments decreed by nature may be 
classed that of the family. God, in the garden of Eden, decreed the law of 
marriage, and from that law springs the family, and out of the family has 
developed all the ethical laws governing the family. So it is with the 
churches of Christ. He, by the fiat of his will, decreed the law, by and 
through which his churches exist, and out of that law has grown all the 
rules by which his churches are ruled to this day. He wills the existence 
of the churches through the laws of the gospel and through those planted 
in our enlightened reasou. Every wise and just rule of ethics is willed by 
Christ as much as if he had written it out in full — as much so as he willed 
the institution of the family —and approves every wholesome rule evolved 
for its government. 

The writings of Pedo-Baptists, commonly received and read by students 
of ecclesiastical polity, have done so much harm, not only to the study of 
church government, but to the study of church history, that an account of 
the true origin and growth of our peculiar system, is perhaps the most 
urgently needed of all additions to our Baptist literature. But next to a 
new history of Baptist church government, what we most require is a philo- 
sophy of true church jurisprudence. If our denomination ever gives birth 
to such a philosophy we shall probably owe it to two advantages. The first 
of them is our possession of an ecclesiastical system, which may be con- 
sidered as indigenous to Baptists alone. Our denominational watchfulness, 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 13 

which has confined us in the old paths, and which has heretofore had a ten- 
dency to retard or limit our advance in ecclesiastical inquiry, has kept our 
church jurisprudence singularly pure from mixture with the stream of writ- 
ten rules flowing from the great fountain of priestcraft ; and thus, when we 
place it in juxtaposition with any other ecclesiastical system, the results of 
the comparison are far more fruitful of instruction than those obtained by 
contrasting the various other systems with one another. The second 
advantage I believe to consist in the growing habit that Baptists have ever 
cultivated, of studying church government as it is revealed in the Scriptures 
and seen in the times of the apostles, and not what it ought to be. Baptists 
are chiefly concerned with ecclesiastical government as it is ; others, with 
what it ought to be. These inquiries may seem to some theoretical, but I 
trust the reader will perceive in the end that they have an interest and im- 
portance, and that they throw light on a subject of all others the most vital 
— that of the government of the churches of the living God. 

Baptist church government rests on facts, Scriptural facts. These facts 
are revealed in the actual workings of the primitive churches. This 
government, resting on these facts, cannot be changed or improved. The 
practice of its principles may be improved, and this every Baptist church 
in the land is endeavoring to do. Ecclesiastical government is obliged, do 
what it may, to adapt the immense mass of existing ethical relations and 
their corresponding laws which have been and are constantly being 
developed, to meet necessary emergencies. This government is natural, neces- 
sary and uninvented. It has grown up within the churches without any 
specific act of re-beginning. If the membership, or any part of them, were 
to rise against it, and to attempt to establish another and a difierent one, the 
question would arise, would that destroy the original form of apostolic 
church government? If it were a political form of government that was 
thus sought to be changed I would say, most emphatically, yes. For God 
has established no particular form of civil government, but has left those 
interested in the formation of them to choose whatever kind best pleases 
themselves. Destroy or overthrow one form of government and those who 
have the power and the right to destroy or overthrow may erect another 
government. But not so in church government, for Christ, the great 
founder of the churches, gave the form and furnished the constitution for 
them, which is immutable and unchangeable. This form descends from 
church to church of the same order and cannot and must not vary in 
pattern. They are hereditary governments, free and independent one of 
another, gradually and voluntarily organized by baptized believers in 
Christ, and rest on facts as revealed in the actual workings of the primitive 
churches. Once admit the fact that church polity is a matter that can be 
changed with impunity, ere long the habit of change comes to be established 
and there is no telling where it will end. Once destroy the independent 
apostolic churches, and unite them for government, you can never again 
cloth them with ecclesiastical power, or fence them in with the laws of the 
gospel ; their polity would forever be open to free choice, and exposed to 



14 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE J 

profane innovations. Ages were spent in beginning and perfecting the 
order of Bible churcli polity ; the only sufficient and effectual agent in its 
formation, aside from the laws of the gospel, was consecrated custom and 
usage; but then those customs and usages hovered over everything, arrested 
all outward disposition to change, and stayed the originality of mankind, and 
kept church polity as it was in the beginning. 

The various kind of churches we now see in the world may be divided 
into two classes : stable ones, and those which change their polity. The 
stable ones are modeled after the apostolic patterns. They are those 
which must ever be considered as the indispensable and first requisites of the 
immutable laws of the gospel with inherent powers to preserve themselves 
forever without change. Ecclesiastical polities having not these powers 
must vary accordingly. If its defective polity will allow it to change and 
become corrupt, and if its object is to reform and reorganize its own deformed 
government, its polity must essentially differ from that of the primitive 
churches. True church government is not a reformation. It is a divine 
institution in which there is no way provided for change, no more than the 
builder can change the foundations of a house after the superstructure has 
been reared. So that he who would build a church must take the founda- 
tion already prepared for him, yet he must not forget his materials "with 
which he must build, when he comes to the practical question of erecting a 
church of Christ. That there are immutable ecclesiastical principles in 
church polity, according to which we can at once pronounce some Scriptural 
and others heretical, is evident. That church government is most Scriptural 
and is the best which secures most effectually all the stable objects of the 
apostolic churches, and does not oblige the membership to sudden and 
violent actions in order to obtain what needs must be obtained by united 
action. I do not, indeed, mean to say, that the Baptist form of government 
cannot and does not develop, but I do say, and ecclesiastical history shows 
it, that it cannot leap ov^er into something else, nor ever become anything 
but what is conditioned by existing apostolic models. 

These views of ecclesiastical polity do not lead to mere expediency in the 
form of government, or to the conclusion that there are no stable principles 
to be obtained. It is our duty, as best we can, to ascertain those elementary 
principles which from the nature of the primitive churches and by ample 
experience show themselves to be essential to the obtaining of the highest 
ends of the churches of Christ ; that is the purity, the security, stability and 
the perpetuity of those churches of which Christ said, the gates of hell shall 
not 'prevail against them. The first inquiry, therefore, is whether the Baptist 
form of church government is Scriptural, is apostolic ; after that, it is for 
wisdom to judge how it is best to seek after and secure these inestimable 
blessings. That system of polity which seeks all good government in the 
personalities of a ruling priesthood, is nothing less than church polity Juda- 
ized ; while the very object of a good system of fundamental laws and insti- 
tutions is to do away with Judaism with its reign of priest-craft, and to 
force, as far as possible, the various personal peculiarities, which in church 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 15 

government are purely adventitious cooperation in obtaining what is seen 
and recognized in the Bible form of polity. 

In the first place let us speak about the legitimacy of church governments, 
for it is a painful truth that we see many different kinds set up in the world. 
What then is a legitimate government, for which Baptists claim ecclesiasti- 
cal power ? We will divide them into governments de jure and de facto. 
The first is a government by law, that is instituted under and by virtue of 
the laws of the gospel. The latter is an uuscriptural form of church polity, 
because the membership do not actually establish and rule it and in which 
sovereign power is not lodged. 

A Baptist church, to define it, de jure is, according to the ancient con- 
ception, an assembly of baptized believers in Christ, instituted and pre- 
served upon the foundation of common love and brotherhood under the laws 
of the gospel alone ; or it is the empire of gospel laws and not of men. On 
the other hand to define a church de facto, according to the modern idea of 
some, it is an art whereby some man, or a few men, usurp a rule over a cen- 
tralized number of churches, in conformity to the notion and interests of a 
man, or class of men, and may be said to be the empire of men, and not of 
the law of the gospel. A church dejure is organized under the immutable 
laws of God, being those laid down by Christ and his apostles in founding 
the churches and is so Scriptural, so natural and so just, always and every- 
where, that no human authority can change or abolish it, and a de facto 
church being such an organization as is contrived by the ingenuity of men, 
and which any body of men may establish, change or abolish according to 
the will of those who instituted it. The one is human, the other divine. 

With all mere de facto systems of church polity the difficulty which lies in 
the way of the general acceptance of the legality of such forms, is the fact 
that we do not sufficiently distinguish between the church and the govern- 
ment which sets it in operation. Ecclesiastical power is mistaken for gov- 
ernment, and government for the church. Baptists see the danger to reli- 
gious liberty in recognizing an unlimited power in church government, which 
is permitted to grow and develop to the utter destruction of the local church. 
Those belonging to other systems are accustomed practically to no other 
organization of the church than by some outside influences, and depend upon 
some foreign power for governmental rule. With Baptists there is no de- 
pendence upon outside influences for the organization of the church. Back 
of all ecclesiastial government lies Christ's Eoyal Charter, so to speak, which 
was granted for its institution, and also back of this charter stands a body 
of baptized believers which organize the church and breathe into it the 
breath of ecclesiastical life. We have this royal grant of power from above 
already in objective reality. This is the point in which Baptists have 
reached a far higher development than any other religious people in the 
world. The church's polity is its very self, and the membership is there to 
preserve and protect it from change and abuse, all customs, laws, commands 
and injunctions from the outside, however old, or from whatever authority, 
to the contrary notwithstanding. It is founded upon those immutable laws 



16 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

of the gospel whicli are essential to its preservation and which can be law- 
fully enforced. 

It is one of the principal elements of ecclesiastical government that the 
local church is itself alone sovereign. Nothing is practically superior to it. 
Nothing can, or does, compulsorily control it. Deciding for itself it may 
determine all questions coming before it either in harmony with Scripture, 
with reason, with truth, with right and with propriety, or it may determine 
all these, dictating all for itself, for impulse, for passion, being in many 
things fallible and unreasonable. Again, in Bible church government the 
local church is a free church. As sovereign, the independent church is 
necessarily free, not governed, not controlled by any force or power outside 
its own borders. It may be persuaded by reason, it may be influenced by 
impulse, it may be induced by desire, it may be afiected by circumstances, 
but it is itself to decide to yield, or not to yield to the influence. As sov- 
ereign it is the only dictating power in ecclesiastical government, free in its 
actions, going out through a whole system of control, but controlled itself 
by nothing except the law of God, interpreted by itself. The Bible is its 
only law book, the Holy Spirit is its chief minister, its constant companion, 
its faithful adviser, and its truest and only guide ; but itself is alone sov- 
ereign and free, the real source of efficiency, the ultimate authority in every 
case, determining the whole system of control affecting every member of the 
church. Everything exists for the benefit of this local church, and should 
exist wholly for the members comprehended in its government. To act for 
itself, unscripturally, or for others, outside its pale, to act for it, or in its 
place, is a perversion of apostolic church government. Any system founded 
upon any other basis is unscriptural in the highest degree. The local 
church, as a free sovereign body, is alone to dictate, order, control in view 
of securing the ends for which it exists. 

Ecclesiastical government, from the New Testament standj^oint, is that 
establishment which Christ and his apostles agreed upon in order to obtain 
the ends of the churches thus instituted. It is the machinery of the 
churches set in motion by the apostles nnder the instruction of our Saviour 
while on earth. Among Baptists it has always originated in one and the 
same way; that is, by institution under a covenant to take the laws of God 
alone for their rule of action, and by the development of ecclesiastical rela- 
tions among their members. The government when instituted remains 
stable and always the same, but these relations, however, develop themselves, 
out of an infinity of given circumstances and conditions. This system of 
church government, from the beginning to the present, in all its main out- 
lines down to its minutest details has become what it is, not simply without 
legislative guidance, but in spite of all extrinsic influences and hindrances. 
It has arisen under the pressure of necessary wants and activities. While 
each church has been pursuing its individual welfare this form of govern- 
ment has been ever becoming more complete. By steps so small and silent, by 
chano-es as insensible as those through which a seed passes into a tree. Bap- 
tist churches have become what we now see. All the various relations, 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 17 

especially those of a religious nature, wliich may subsist between men, make 
up that which induces them to unite into organic churches, and leads to 
ecclesiastical relations, or if pronounced by the laws of the gospel, to Scrip- 
tural relations ; the sum total of which is the church, with its polity and 
government. A system of church polity, especially that of the gospel 
churches, is something gradually grown and progressively developed, for a 
church, belonging to this system, can no more develop out of this form of 
polity, than a man can help being the offspring of his father. It can and 
will improve and develop, but in no instance and under no circumstance 
can it change itself and begin anew and remain a gospel church. Its life is 
its own ; its polity is peculiar to itself, and were its foundations torn up and 
an attempt made to build from the fragments of other systems its legality 
would no longer subsist, and the church become extinct. 

Since then Baptist church government is that institution set up by the 
apostles, by which the churches endeavor to obtain and secure the objects 
Christ had in view when he said. Upon this rock I build my church, the excel- 
lence of that government naturally depends upon what these objects are, 
and especially upon the membership for whom it exists, and through whom 
it operates. Membership, in this sense, does not mean the aggregation of all 
the members of a whole denomination of the same faith and order united 
into an universal church for government, but an organic membership living 
together in a local church considered in the various relations in which, 
according to the divine order of things, they must move. The object of a 
church is the aiding of local groups of Christians, such as can meet together 
in one assembly, in obtaining the highest degree of spiritual development, or 
the greatest possible politic growth of the local church, both by removing 
obstacles, or assisting directly, in all cases in which the individual member 
of the church ought not, cannot or will not act individually and upon his 
own responsibility. But apostolic local church government was not built 
in one day, one year or one century ; this polity resembles neither a mush- 
room nor a hot-house plant, but is like a well-ordered plantation, first to be 
local in its nature and then to be cultivated in wisdom, that is, patiently, 
perseveringly and judiciously, keeping steadily in view the main object for 
which the field may have been laid out by the Saviour, with constant refer- 
ence to the kind of plants he transplanted therein, but not such as may best 
answer our ends and views. This great achievement was not developed in 
one day, nor is it possible for changes in the ground work to take place, nor 
the landmarks to be removed ; as the moral growth of mankind from the 
first ages to the present was gradual and slow, so must the growth and 
development of Christ's churches be, each time and place affording new 
problems to solve. The legislation of Moses, whose object was to lead 
bondsmen into liberty, and to manifest belief in one God, cannot be set 
up as a model for this new creation. The numberless canons, decretals, 
books of discipline and digest of human laws we see enacted into written 
codes by pseudo-ecclesiastics of this day, do not give us a test by which to 
try the apostolic churches of Christ. 
2 



18 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

When individuals unite to form a cliurcli, each conveys to all. For how 
can the concurrence of all be ascertained but by taking the vote of each 
separately, upon the question whether they do concur ? No other device 
can be imagined by which this consent can be effected. Each member is a 
separate, free and independent unit, and the proposition is to ascertain 
whether they concur in lodging a vast mass of power in the joint association 
of tliem all and displacing it from the separate jurisdiction where it before 
existed. It is clear that every act done, up to the time when the new 
power is actually created, must be separate, otherwise the church or assem- 
bly would be a joint association, before the covenant creating them such 
would have been made. The consent of each is then necessary to create 
the church, and when this is effected a largo amount of power, which before 
resided in each member separately, is made to reside in them jointlj^, thus 
generating what is called ecclesiastical power. And it is very material 
whether the covenant was made before or after the organization of the 
church. When several act together to form a church, the consent of each, 
before the union is formed, is necessary ; for how could it become the act of 
all if it were not the act of each ? A covenant which is separately ratified 
by a number of ba^ptized believers, is the joint act of all, precisely because it is 
the act of each. But nevertheless that the covenant thus entered into would 
still be the fruit or result of a joint, not of a single, authority, is manifest ; 
for a consent of all the members or a majority of them, not the will of one, 
would be necessary to unmake it. After this union by covenant, every 
exercise of authority is, from the necessity of the case, joint, and not several ; 
all ecclesiastical power resides in the church, not in the agents or officers 
elected to administer it, but in the joint assembly to which the separate 
wills of individuals have given birth. 

When individuals thus enter into a solemn covenant, into an aggregate 
assembly — a church — no one member or a number of them have the 
right, they have not even the ability to secede or to withdraw from the 
church without the consent of the same. Such a government thus generated 
comprehends a defined and individual unity, and there is a plain inconsist- 
ency in supposing that some of the members may be ecclesiastically out of 
the government, while, by solemn covenant, they are within it. The church, 
and its government, where the membership is homogeneous in doctrine, are 
corresponding and convertible terms. If independent individuals enter into 
the same form of government, they will be subjected to the same disability. 
They will have united with an aggregate church and for the purposes of 
government have ceased to be separate individuals, and the power to go 
hence with impunity would be a solecism. Each separate member is a part 
of an aggregate assembly, he cannot therefore withdraw his allegiance from 
it, in any other way than by the consent of the church itself. If he should 
do so, in contempt of church authority, he would instantly place himself 
ecclesiastically without the pale of the Baptist denomination, upon being 
excommunicated for such disregard of the church and its rightful authority. 
Church sovereignty resides in the church, and this ecclesiastical power 



OR, THE COMJIOX LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 1,9 

assumes jurisdiction over all its members. The right to withdraw from a 
church with impunity is not the exercise of an act of sovereignty, but the 
reverse. Between it and the objection of the church, there is a clear and 
broad distinction. Abrupt withdrawal is an unequivocal admission, that 
sovereignty does not reside in the faction withdrawing. An act of sover- 
eignty admits members and dismisses them, while secession admits the incom- 
petency of the seceding parties to do so, aud instead of bending the govern- 
ment to their wills, they are compelled to bend to the will of the govern- 
ment, and thus wdth impunity withdraw from the church. I speak of the 
abstract right to withdraw from a church. Under some circumstances it 
may be permissible, which will be treated of elsewhere. 

If, however, we imagine by a church covenant an actual agreement made 
at some definite period between a body of Christians, according to which 
the I'ules of the churches and the fundamental laws are otherwise designated, 
or by which the contracting parties subject themselves and all future mem- 
bers to this rule, then the idea of a covenant is radically wrong, and leads 
to damaging conclusions, favoring priest-craft and priestly domination. But 
ecclesiastical polity is not an imaginative thing, for we can find nowhere 
any such body of men organized into a church. He who founds the churches 
upon this idea confounds it with him who is set up to rule over it. Hence 
church polity appears as something separate from, and opposed, in a degree, 
to the membership, in short, they do not conceive a church as such, but the 
membership as the ruled part, and the government as the ruling part, both 
materially separate and distinct. All church government, according to this 
idea, descends from the priest, that is, the supposed authority of God pro- 
claimed by the priest, and that all ecclesiastical relations originate in some 
mysterious way from religion alone. This view, incredible as it may sound 
to a Baptist, has its advocates among all Catholics, Episcopalians and Pres- 
byterians. This is the link that binds the church to the state, and makes 
the priesthood a privileged class and gives them their right to dominate the 
churches. The fact that we find the character of the apostle blended with 
the ruler of the early churches, is no proof that the churches originated on 
these grounds. There can be no doubt but that these early founders of the 
churches of Christ were likewise the humble pastors of these humble local 
churches. ^Yould it be on that account philosophical to say that all church 
polity is of a mystical and theocratical character, and that they originated 
or constituted the churches without the consent of those to be ruled, exclud- 
ing therefrom the ecclesiastical principle? According to this the priest is 
before the membership, as the master is before the slave, not seeing that both 
can only co-exist. 

Though the government of the primitive churches, thus created, was 
weak in the extreme, yet it subsisted and progressed only because, on the 
whole, it was the embodiment of the new capacity and desires of the early 
disciples in carrying out the will of Christ in setting on foot His churches. 
In all afiairs, ecclesiastical as well as human, it is easiest to work in the 
direction of the least resistance. The resistance is least where the commou 



20 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

api^etites and desires of mankind ratlier co-operate than oppose. Eccle- 
siastical government is found to have grown out of some preponderant 
impulse in favor of supporting existing teachings, facts and institutions. 
But these teachings, facts and institutions themselves were the only aggre- 
gate expression of customs and habits, operating through long periods of 
time and by means of the intensifying force of concert and of associations 
of all kinds, hardened into gospel grooves. At the time that true church 
government of a permanent kind has come into being, those composing the 
church are becoming self-assertive and self-reflective. It can be said that it 
is from the very first the expression of the best, wisest and most orderly dis- 
positions to be found in the church. If it were not so, it could only preserve 
itself for a time by virtue of extraneous forces, exercised either by priestly 
domination, or by the few over the many. Otherwise it could not live, and 
still less grow and develop. It will be a long time before the Baptists can 
2,ppreciate the laws and government of these primitive churches which have 
come down to us with the stream of generations and are really made to our 
hands. We may have had a little share in making them what they are. 
But the materials and elements which are bound up in these w^onderful 
creations are none of our making, and while they will survive us, not the 
longest line of our successors will survive them. 

This rigid drill and discipline in the beginning of the churches was the 
peculiar work of the apostles, who had for three years received a like drill 
from the Saviour. They were the most visible part of this incipient polity, 
for they alone could have known the mind of the great founder of the 
churches, could know the fixed law, and could apply the fixed law of this 
wonderful creation, which was to be the greatest factor in the civilization of 
the coming ages, for they were recognized as the authorized custodians of 
those mysterious principles, and had the sole command as to how the 
churches should be founded. They alone knew the code of drill, the army 
regulations ; they alone were obeyed ; they alone could drill. There was 
no place here for a written constitution. They remembered the Saviour's 
oral instructions, and by oral instructions they were taught how to build 
churches, and how to develop them. In this, the very earliest times of the 
churches, the choice of the men, who made up those churches, as to how the 
churches should be constructed, did not determine their structure. They 
took it as it came from the hand of Christ. Every one who entered these 
organic units was born, as it vv^ere, to a specific status in the church, and in 
that place he had to stay. In that place he found certain duties, which he 
had to fulfill, and there were certain privileges which he might enjoy, and 
which were all he need to expect. The net of custom caught them as they 
entered the church, and kept each where he stood. The churches were 
simple, free, and independent one of another, having the apostles as their 
common, ordinary pastors, getting their membership to obey. When the 
church-makers of this day go about the business of church building, they 
see nothing in these simple structures to be praised, or admired, or to be 
imitated ; all seems a blunder — a complex error, to be got rid of as soon as 



OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 21 

possible. Bat that error has made the Baptists what they are to-day. For 
this form of church polity is their inheritance; they have kept it pure. On 
the very physical organization of every Baptist church in the world, the 
hereditary marks of these apostolic churches are stamped. And the people 
all along the line of the ages, who have adhered to these ancient forms, 
became the Baptists of the day ; a people firmly set in the ancient land- 
marks — a peculiar people, indeed. 

There was a time in the history of every Baptist church, now extant in 
the world, or that ever did exist, when the individuals who instituted it 
existed before the church itself. It is an organic unit, and depends upon 
men to organize it. The foundations of the churches of Christ lie too 
deeply in the human soul, in man's whole Christianized nature, to be 
explained by saying that a man, or set of men, can found one great uni- 
versal church system, and all smaller organic units are to be merged in that 
imperial church for government and worship. To Baptists, the local 
organic church is all and everything, the individual member receiving his 
teaching and his ethical strength from his church alone. And this organic 
unit constitutes the ground on which is founded what is called church sov- 
ereignty, that is, self-sufficient ecclesiastical power, Avhich derives its vital 
energy from no other source but from itself, is founded by no superior 
authority, but imparts it under the laws of the gospel, and extends over 
everything that is requisite in order to obtain the object of the local church. 
This church has for its legitimate objects the preaching and spread of the 
gospel, and all those things that are necessarily incident thereto, and which 
he, nevertheless, cannot obtain singly, ought not to obtain singly, or will 
not do singly. Men may exist, and be Christians, without a church, but a 
church cannot exist without Christian men. It lives, and may die, but the 
royal charter, under and by which they may be instituted, still lives, and 
will live forever. I do not believe there ever was a time, since the establish- 
ment of the first church at Jerusalem, when these Baptist churches did not 
exist, but admit, for the sake of argument, that there was, Christ's charter 
still exists, by which they may be founded at any time. 

While the phenomenon of ecclesiastical jurisprudence is intimately bound 
up with that of government, yet a critical research into the nature of the 
apostolic churches shows conclusively a condition in which those churches 
may be said to have existed without w^ritten laws. Not that the Saviour 
had not already granted the charter, so to speak, by which they were 
authorized to be organized, yet nothing is more certain than that a settled 
government subsisted before the conscious manufacture of the ecclesiastical 
laws by which they were to be governed. It is also true that the apostles 
were present, and gave direction to the formation of the churches, yet there 
was a time in their history when they had not advanced to the law-making 
stage, for it was some time after that when the Scriptures were written and 
compiled. Hence it can be truthfully said that, barring the charter or con- 
stitution, which Christ granted for their organization, the apostolic churches 
existed before ecclesiastical laws proper came into existence. The establish- 



22 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUSCH JURISPEUDENCE ; 

ment of the first churclies was the nucleus of all law and order. But it is 
likewise true that the customary rules and usages, necessarily arising out of 
those churches, contain the germ of all future ecclesiastical laws, and that 
it is error to confine the use of the term ecclesiastical law to those rules 
which attain commanding validity only when the churches can be looked 
upon as fully developed in all their essential departments. Before the epoch 
of the complete founding of the churches it is certainly true that many of 
the phenomena of ecclesiastical jurisprudence are present, as though by 
anticipation, in an unmistakable guise. 

Christ and His apostles in the beginning wisely refrained from formula- 
ting a written code of laws for the use of the churches, and imposing them 
on a people who were unprepared for them by previous habits of thought, 
or who might have been, on other grounds, persistently averse to them. 
Thus an enduring antagonism and opposition in the incipiency of church 
government might have been engendered, which is incompatible with all 
ecclesiastical and spiritual progress, and constantly threatens divisions and 
spasmodic changes in the polity of the churches in the very beginning. It 
was necessary in the very outset to employ custom and usage as the ally of 
church government rather than to challenge it as its foe. The large bulk of 
the church's rules of ethics has thus its origin in voluntary customs which, 
as it were, came spontaneously into existence and were maintained in force, 
partly by the mere facility of obeying the promptings of habit, partly by 
the influence of the membership exerted in favor of what is familiar and 
consecrated by long use, and partly by the felt convenience of having settled 
rules and practices, to which the mass of the membership may be expected 
at all times to conform. And we see there was no central authority, supreme 
over all those early churches, which may be said to have wielded the forces 
of all the then existing churches and to have represented their will. In 
other words there was no centralized government in an ecclesiastical sense, 
no universal church and no true law for the government of such a politic 
body. Ecclesiastical law was, in fact, the unwritten detailed expression of 
the will of a local church published through its originator, the government 
of the local church, which is the only supreme ecclesiastical authority on 
earth. 

Thus we see what evil consequences might follow, and do really follow, 
from attempting to impose a written system of laws upon a church out of 
harmony with the previous usages and the temperament of a religious people, 
through the influence of a priestly caste of functionaries. Ecclesiastical law 
in the true sense can only be found in a local church in its fully created and 
perfected sense, and where the law and the government do not imply the 
same thing. In such a system of church jurisprudence it were better that 
ecclesiastical law should remain like it was in the apostolic times, unwritten, 
so far as its essential nature is concerned. Fortunately for the Baptist form 
of church government, it necessarily happens that the spontaneous customs 
of which early ecclesiastical law consists, or out of which it is generated, do 
not admit of being written down even in an unsystematic form. In all the 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 23 

New Testament Scriptures, besides some fragmentary rules of ethics and 
morals, there is no attempt to recast ecclesiastical laws into an exact and 
systematic form. And among Baptists, who alone have fallen heirs to this 
Bible form of church government, it is only within the past half century 
that any determined attempts have been made to compile and publish the 
customary laws of Baptist churches in a clearly intelligible form. This, 
however, has been done, not authoritatively by the churches, but by private 
men on their own account, who are esteemed, skilled and learned in ecclesi- 
astical law and government. These treatises are very highly prized by Bap- 
tists, and are useful in proportion to their intrinsic Scripturalness, and have 
tended greatly to keep the law stable, and rendered uniform in its applica- 
tion to individual cases coming before the churches for decision. 

Thus we see that these laws are not a legislative creation, but so far as 
they have ever been reduced to writing, they are the creation of the churches, 
first in the form of customs and usages, and afterwards collected and exhib- 
ited in written formulas by eminent writers whose learning and wisdom all 
defer to, who on that account are considered authoritative, as the writings of 
famous lawyers are received by the courts of justice. This well-known body 
of laws is based upon the Scriptural law, extended by so many of the usages 
and practices as the churches can be supposed to have created and adopted, 
enlarged by a superstructure of interpretation which ecclesiastical commen- 
tators have erected ; but of course it cannot have any such sacredness, and 
consequently any such authority, as the Scriptures have. Baptist church 
law has been greatly developed in this way; but we have always attributed 
but little real authority to commentaries of the most learned writers of text- 
books. We obtain our law, and adjust it to the needs of each succeeding 
generation, through the decisions of our churches on isolated groups of facts 
establisii-ed by the most careful methods. It cannot be supposed to have 
been produced by a process resembling written commentaries or ecclesias- 
tical legislation. It is the business of the whole denomination to see to ifc 
that this law does not clash with the word of God in the written law of the 
New Testament. Those who have studied this system of ecclesiastical juris- 
prudence know that legislation of any kind, whether in churches or a state, 
is associated with innovation. A lawyer will tell you that the legislator is 
always supposed to innovate; the judge never. It is the peculiar and only 
province of the judge to interpret, declare and pronounce what is pre-exist- 
ing law or custom; but it does not follow that this interpretation and decla- 
ration of the law has any affinity for legislation in the modern sense of that 
term. The theory of ecclesiastical legislation is of human origin, and is a 
trick and device of priest-craft, which has gone far to undermine and de- 
stroy the reverence of the world for the written word of God. 

Hence the Baptists of the earth, whose lessons to the world in the matter 
of the science of free government and religious liberty have been so valuab'e, 
have never had a written fundamental law in the true sense of that expres- 
sion. Our constitution being a sort of a denominational habit, a kind of 
ecclesiastical education by covenant, a collection of hereditary usages and 



24 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPP.UDEXCE; 

customs, but nevertheless living ideas, so adjusted that errors drop out that 
truth may be grafted in their place. The history of ecclesiastical govern- 
ment, so called, shows that written church constitutions have never pre- 
vented church commotions, reformations and schisms. If there were any 
authority in Scripture for one, a good written constitution might be a help 
to a church that knows how to make and use it. But it is very evident that 
the best conceived one is no help to a church that is not otherwise capable 
of self-government. The equal facility with which the several church 
systems have made them and disregarded them, is nothing to the point 
either for or against such instruments, but only shows how little of real 
efficacy in the business of church government such societies have achieved. 
Such humanly devised written systems have nothing better than an arbitrary 
written rule to apply to the enormous range of objects that have to be 
brought into harmonious combination under tlie new system of ecclesiastical 
legislation. What can be looked for as likely to exercise a steady control 
over an unsymmetrical and unscientific jurisprudence which can only be 
constituted by arbitrary rules, inasmuch as, instead of reposing on the firm 
basis of the Scriptures they are made to rest on the intermediate principles 
of ecclesiastical legislation, on that which is merely arbitrary? To an 
incomplete system of legislation there is then added as a supplement a juris- 
prudence as full of defects as it is unscriptural. 

By the institution of the free and independent churches of Christ two 
great ends, the one of religious liberty, the other of the administration of 
church aifairs, have been united — namely, direct participation of the mem- 
bership of each local church in the government of the same, and the pre- 
venting it from falling entirely into the hands of a privileged class of the 
priesthood. Freedom of thought and action and liberty of conscience 
cannot subsist except in a free church under a free gospel. The high destiny 
of a baptized believer in Christ demands it ; the church acts through laws 
of its own generation ; they are the great organs of the churches of Christ, 
the organs of combined reason derived by individual interpretation from the 
word of God ; without them churches would not be churches, and churches 
could not fulfill that for which they were created. And, in the administration 
of church afiTairs, when the very moment ultimately arrives for which 
church law was made, when it is finally to be applied as a general rule to a 
practical case, and the practical principle is to be realized in church govern- 
ment, it is left to the membership of each church — to those who helped to 
generate the law and are responsible before God for its faithful execution. 
There is a deep meaning and much beauty in all this. Ecclesiastical law is 
the expression of the supposed will of God, and the membership represents 
the church, in judging whether, in the matter before them, the facts warrant 
the application of the law. Where a new law appears, it is the product of 
facts, not of theoretical legislation. The membership of every church repre- 
sents, or rather is, whenever they act in the fear of God, the living, operat- 
ing law of the gospel. The apostles might have chosen Matthias to be 
Judas' successor, but they relegated it to the church of which he was a 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 25 

member and by lot he was chosen. Indeed it may be justly said the mem- 
bership of each local church in their sovereign capacity represents more fully 
and more Scripturally the will of God, than any other person or body 
of men on earth, not even excepting the apostles in the times when they 
lived upon the earth. 

True church independence and freedom consist in being free from any 
superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority 
of any man or body of men, but to have only the law of the gospel for a 
rule of action. The liberty of every Christian in a church of Christ is to be 
under no other w'ill but that established by consent in the church local 
of which one is a member ; nor under the dominion of any restraint, but 
what the church shall ordain according to the trnst put in it. Nevertheless, 
liberty is not a freedom for every one to do what he pleases, to live as he 
pleases, and not to be tried by any law, but true liberty of every church 
member under ecclesiastical government is to have a standing rule of ethics 
to live by, common to every one of the church made by the common consent 
of the whole church ; a liberty to follow one's own will in all things where 
it does not come in conflict with the laws of Christ ; and not to be subject to 
the inconsistent, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man, as the freedom of 
every Christian is to be under no other restraint but the laws of Clirist. 
Baptists belong to that system of church government which carries religious 
liberty over the globe, because wherever it is found, free institutions, a free 
church, a free gospel and free worship accompany it. We belong to that 
peculiar people whose obvious task it is, among other things, to plant the 
seeds of civil liberty over vast regions in every part of the earth, as well as 
that of religious liberty, for where the one is in all its perfection there the 
other most flourishes. We belong to that great denomination whose happy 
lot it is to be placed, with the full inheritance of both religious and political 
liberty, on the noblest soil in the noblest land upon God's footstool. And all 
Baptists will rejoice with me when I say, not with pride, but with joy, that 
we belong to that church which alone has religious freedom and self- 
government, in the true gospel meaning of these terms. 

The separation of ecclesiastical government into three branches — the exe- 
cutive, legislative and judicial, so to speak, — is not a necessary condition of 
free church government. In the nature of government, the will of the law- 
making power (which, in ecclesiastical jurisprudence, is the Scripture) must 
be superior, and the executive power subordinate. This necessarily must be 
so, because the will must first express itself before the act willed can be per- 
formed. In a highly-developed church system a law is first formulated, and 
then the designated functionary executes it. The whole circle of church 
government is comprised in commands and performances. That the same 
persons both will and command, through the law, and also execute the 
law, as in the apostolic times, in no wise affects the essential fact of the 
duality of the processes, and the further fact that the command must pre- 
cede the action which is commanded to be done. Hence that department 
of any system of church government which expresses the will of the church 



26 A THEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

is the central and superior power in the church. This every Baptist under- 
stands, for he feels called upon to obey no law but that of the Bible — the 
law-book of the churches. Those who obey this sacred law are only the 
servants who carry it out. The separation and distribution of these various 
functions of government to different individuals in other church systems is 
only for the convenient, practical working of the government; and when 
the advocates of these systems insist that a division of church government 
into these three departments — the executive, legislative and judicial — is of 
the very essence of free ecclesiastical institutions, they put mere form for 
substance. It is by no means incompatible with the liberty of action and 
freedom of thought and conscience that the law-making body should be also 
the executive, and even the judicial, body, as it is in Baptist church govern- 
ment. 

Baptist church government is not one of checks and balances, as those 
terms are understood in political science. If by a balanced government we 
mean one in which the principal checks to power reside outside the churches, 
Baptist church government is not a balanced one. The materials are hap- 
pily wanting with which to construct an ecclesiastical system of that char- 
acter. There are no orders of the ministry, no bishop, no cardinal, no pope, 
no legislative assembly, no ecclesiastical establishment. These ^are not 
necessary elements in the composition of what is ordinarily understood by 
balanced church government. There are no such invidious distinctions to 
mar the equality of the system. The membership are not divided into 
active and passive members; every member enjoys a like freedom with 
every other member. The ecclesiastical institutions, though destined to per- 
form different functions, have one character and conspire to one common 
end. As they are not the accidental growth of circumstances, but have 
been formed with design, the power which created them continues afterward 
to uphold them, and to regulate their movements. So that Baptist church 
government, although not a balanced one in the Pedo-baptist sense of the 
term, is so in a still higher sense. Whatever division of powers there may 
be, none of the departments possess a self-existing authority, none exercise 
an independent will of their own ; for they are all controlled by the internal 
force which resides in each church. The idea of a division or distribution 
of the sovereign powers of a church for legislation and rule, could never 
have entered the minds of the apostles, because these ecclesiastical legisla- 
tors, being elective, are not co-eternal with the churches ; they, being tem- 
porary and artificial, so to speak, might demolish as well as build, there 
being danger that, had the churches created several orders and division of 
powers, these different orders and division would naturally swallow up the 
churches, as they have done in every other system. 

It is one of the fundamental elements of apostolic church government 
that the sovereign power of a church cannot be divided. And if there were 
a church wherein the rights of sovereignty were divided it cannot rightly be 
called a church, but the corruption of a church. The truth is, that the 
right of church sovereignty is such as they that have and exercise it cannot, 



OR, THE COMMOjS- LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 27 

though they would, give away any part thereof, and retain the rest, and still 
remain a church of Christ. As, for example, if we should suppose the mem- 
bers of the churches at the National Capital, and several others all closely 
combined, having in themselves absolute sovereignty, to have chosen a 
standing ecclesiastical council, and that to this council they had given the 
supreme power of making laws, reserving, nevertheless, to themselves, in 
direct and express terms, the right of a part of the sovereignty, this grant 
of the churches to the council would be of no effect without an express war- 
rant of Scriptural authority. No church of Christ can deprive itself of its 
own sovereignty so far as to subject itself to an arbitrary power, either in 
the church or out of it, which may treat it absolutely at its caprice ; this 
would be to renounce its own ecclesiastical life as a church of Christ, of 
which it is not the master — would be to renounce its duty, which is never 
permitted ; and if this be true of the church which would blot out its ecclesi- 
astical status, much less has an individual the power to surrender his liberty 
and individuality, with which each one composing the church is divinely 
endowed. A power given to a church by Christ for a certain purpose is 
limited by that purpose, and consists in the right to do or not to do that 
which the law of the gospel does or does not prohibit, and in the certainty 
that all exactly follow that rule. 

Thus we see that Baptist church government is the most wonderful pro- 
duct of ecclesiastical history. It comes nearer to solving all the problems 
of ecclesiastical organization than any system ever developed by human 
ingenuity. In the first place, it preserves the Christian world from the 
monstrous oppression of the universal church idea. This is an indispensable 
condition of ecclesiastical progress. The churches, thus instituted and 
organized, advance ecclesiastically, as well as individually, by coming in 
contact, competition and antagonism with all other systems. The universal 
or monarchical system of church polity suppresses all this in its universal 
reign over the churches, which means, in the long run, stagnation and 
despotism. At the same time. Baptist church government solves beautifully 
the relation between churches by the development of a system of inter- 
church law, which we will explain fully in another place. In the second 
place, Baptist church government solves the problem of the relation of 
church sovereignty to religious liberty and freedom of conscience ; so that 
while it is the most perfect as well as the most powerful ecclesiastical organi- 
zation that the world has ever produced, it is still the freest and most inde- 
pendent. This could not be otherwise, because it permits the participation 
of the governed in the government. The membership have a common 
faith, will and practice. This common understanding is the strongest moral 
basis which a church government can possibly have ; and, at the same time, 
it secures the development and administration of usages and customs whose 
righteousness must be acknowledged by all, and whose effect will be the 
realization of the truest religious liberty. In this beautiful system there can 
be no jealousy between sister churches; and the principle will be universally 
recognized that, where uniformity is necessary, it must exist; but when 



28 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUSCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

uniformity is not necessary, variety is to reign in order that through it a 
deeper and truer harmony may be discovered. Heuce it must be insisted 
that this wonderful system of church polity is the greatest production of the 
Christian era ; and the fact that it is the creation of Christ and his apostles, 
and has been fostered and kept pure by the Baptists of the world, stamps 
them as indeed a peculiar people, and authorizes them, in the ecclesiastical 
economy of the world, to assume the leadership in the establishment and 
administration of Christ's kingdom on earth. 

We know nothing of the influences and the conditions under which the 
apostles and early Christians awakened to the consciousness of the organic 
local church, and felt the impulse to exert itself for the objective realization 
of that consciousness except through a close study of the churches them- 
selves. We are fully warranted, however, by the history of those early 
churches which the record presents to us, in concluding that this great light 
did not come to all at once. But these fundamental principles form the 
nucleus of ecclesiastical organization. They first establish an organic 
church, and from behind its power and influence they govern the member- 
ship. The religious sanction secures obedience to the laws of its organiza- 
tion. Religion and law doubtless at first were confused and mingled. They 
were joint forces in this early period when those early disciples- emerged 
from that chaotic state and entered upon a course of true development ; but 
the membership were enveloped by the churches, and existed only by their 
covenanted obligations and the moral support which they received from the 
church thus instituted. Under this form, the membership are disciplined 
and educated. It leaves a large sphere of individual activity unrestrained. 
In its incipiency it tended to prevent the respect and obedience for Jaw 
developed by a privileged priesthood from becoming too timorous and ser- 
vile. It opens the way for a more general exertion of human reason and 
education. 

At last, through the educating power of self-reliance and self-government, 
the whole membership are awakened to the consciousness of a complete 
organic church of Christ, and feel the impulse to participate in the work of 
its objective realization. Animated by loyalty to Christ, and loyalty to 
nothing else in church government, they gather about their church, as the 
best and only existing nucleus of ecclesiastical power on earth. They give 
the church the streugth to overcome both defiant officers and rebelUous 
members. They establish the organic unity of the church by a process pecu- 
liar to themselves. They bring the absolute sovereignty of the church to 
realization. They subject all individuals and. all associations of individuals 
within its jurisdiction to its sway. Apparently they make the government 
and the officers to be the church. But really they make them but the ser- 
vants of the church. The church is now its constituent membership in sov- 
ereign organization. This is an immense advance in the new kingdom of 
God on earth, in comparison to the old regime. It is the beginning of the 
modern apostolic ecclesiastical era. Under its divine and educating influ- 
ence the churches spread rapidly, as new converts are added to them, and 



on, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 29 

the new idea becomes completely popularized. The doctrine that baptized 
believers in Christ in ultimate sovereign organization are the church, be- 
comes a formulated principle in ecclesiastical government. The sovereign 
membership of each church turn their attention to the perfecting of their 
own organization. They lay hands upon the royal priesthood, and strip it 
of its assumed and usurped powers and make it purely an office. If it ac- 
commodates itself to the position Christ assigned it, it is allowed to exist ; if 
not, it is cast aside. It derives its authority, with all its sacred immunities 
and rights, from the church, and the government of the church has only the 
duty and the power of observing and protecting those immunities and rights, 
in the sphere assigned to it by the church under the laws of the gospel of 
Christ. 

Ecclesiastical government, the rudiments of which are thus viewed, is stable 
and permanent. It does not lie within the power of men to create it to-day 
and destroy it to-morrow, as caprice may move them, or to change its funda- 
mental form from that which is laid down in Scripture. The law of the 
gospel sets exact limits to the lengths to which it permits individuals to go 
in this direction. It is ever present to prevent the violation of those limits 
by any church or association of churches or individuals to the injury of the 
rights and prerogatives of other churches or individual members thereof. It 
stands ever ready, if perchance the measures of prevention prove unsuccess- 
ful, to punish, by proper ecclesiastical censures, such violations. Really the 
church of Christ cannot be conceived without permanency and stability. 
The question is. Did Christ and his apostles give the churches a particular 
form of government, and is that form sufficiently definite to be imitated 
now ? If so that form is its very essence, and is presumed to contain the 
most truthful interpretations of this question, which a fallible and develop- 
ing humaii view can, at the given moment, discover. This is a truism 
which none can deny ; that the power that has the right to create can only 
change or amend. Christ the great head of the church formed and moulded 
it to suit his will. To say that man can change it at will, would be to de- 
throne Christ the sovereign by making the will of the subject superior to his 
own will. Thus must every healthy mind come to the conclusion that there 
is not only instability, but incompleteness and positive error, in such an or- 
ganization of the church. It does not require a great deal of scientific re- 
flection to detect the error. It lies in the doctrine of an amalgamated cen- 
tralized system of church government in which the local church is destroyed. 

I contend that there is no such a thing in ecclesiastical government as a 
centralized church polity; that this ecclesiastical adjective is applicable only 
to post-apostolic systems, and that the attempt to make a centralized system 
in which many churches are united for government, is caused by confound- 
ing the conceptions of a church and the government which sets it in mo- 
tion. This ecclesiastical phenomenon appeared in that period of the history 
of the churches when, through the expansion of the church, its organization 
suffered natural changes which did not express themselves immediately in 
the forms of the gospel. The dull mind of post-apostolic sects cannot at once 



so A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPRUDEK-CE; 

be made conscious of such changes and the damaging effects upon true 
ecclesiastical government. It takes them in only piecemeal, and formulates 
them piecemeal, and is always deceived by the tempting conceit that our 
Saviour and his apostles established no particular form of church govern- 
ment, and that the whole thing is a matter for the ecclesiastical legislator to 
shape at his will. When this lax view is taken of church polity, no wonder 
that we see in the Christian world so many systems different the one from 
the other. No wonder that we see the autonomy of what ought to be free 
and independent churches utterly destroyed and an unwieldly overgrown 
system of church government erected over their ruins with proud and haughty 
ecclesiastics ruling them with rods of iron. No wonder we see the simple 
form of church polity of the Scriptures widened and expanded until it 
reaches the uttermost limits of the earth with one man standing at its head 
claiming with blasphemous affrontery to be the supreme ruler of not only the 
Christian world, but of the temporal world, ready with a temporal sword in 
hand to destroy all who will not bow down and worship at the shrine of his 
power. Other sects have not gone to such lengths, but they belong to that 
system which makes these things possible. If they would only study this 
subject in the light of God's word, this source of confusion would not exist. 

f seudo-ecclesiastics who would build a new church as a mechanic would 
build a house, or the machinist a new machine, forget, in their fervor after 
completeness, the real functions of the institution they seek to found, will 
fail in its object about in proportion as it is denied elasticity, adaptability, 
room for growth and the faculty of casting off worn-out parts and obsolete 
functions which are only found in the apostolic polity. A written church 
constitution which deals in certain preconceived general principles, and 
seeks to mould the affairs of the churches into conformity with them, is very 
different from primitive church government which in its genius undertakes 
to arrive at the knowledge of fundamental maxims, by availing itself of a 
vast fund of experience and observation existing among the membership 
themselves. Hence Baptist church polity in imitation cf the divine models 
is, for this reason, really a difficult and arduous achievement. The difficulty 
does not consist in the degree, but in the extent of intellect necessary for 
the occasion. A plan of government in which the popular will has a direct 
agency, presupposes a very wide diffusion of intelligence, and this at once 
stamps upon the undertaking both a practical and a comprehensive charac- 
ter. By this means, the experience, the teaching and acts of one generation 
of Baptists are made to live where the persons composing it are physically 
dead. Without it all this would have died v/ith the body as with other 
animals. In church jurisprudence, historical knowledge is not only accumu- 
lated capital, but productive capital. By its help each succeeding age can 
begin where the last expired. Without it each age and each man must 
commence in ignorance and infancy. By its help a church, or the whole 
denomination, may become as one vast living, never dying man. 

In this modern age men have learned how to make new societies and to 
establish new forms of government for them. But, after all, few men have 



OR, THE COMMOI^ LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 31 

been equal to the stupid and mistaken labor of making a new cliurch of 
Chricit. Every one knows how natural it is for Baptists to resort to the 
apostolic form of church government and how tenaciously they cling to it. 
They delight to copy it ; they would be unnatural if they did not adopt it. 
And not only do they, without thinking, choose the apostolic form of polity 
which was in vogue in the primitive times, but they know not how to invent 
another. How distasteful are these old forms to the new church builder 
whom it happens not to suit ! Baptists like and venerate that form of 
church government which they ever see before them recorded in the Scrip- 
tures ; and if they are too odd and old-fashioned to see any beauty in the 
many new-fangled systems, they might be pitied, but ought not to be con- 
demned. One of their mottoes is : AVhat the apostles set up and used 
strengthens; what is disused weakens. Christ gave them the charter to 
erect the churches, and they made a model. Then the necessity which rules 
all to imitate what is before their eyes, and to be what they are expected to 
be, moulded the early disciples to adhere to that model. This is the very pro- 
cess by which the churches of Christ are being made in our own time by the 
Baptists of the world. This model has given its shape to Baptist churches 
because this body of Christians has unconsciously imitated it. None but 
Baptists have had any share in either their origin or in their propagation. 
The accident of a departure from this system early in the Christian era led 
some astray, but the Baptists, under whatever name they may have hereto- 
fore existed, have preserved the original forms by customary copying and 
stand ready to hand them down unimpaired to future generations. Christ, 
instead of perpetually creating different models for different kinds of church 
governments, created a distinct model for every church alike. From this 
model all other churches of the apostolic form are to be made. Thus Christ 
formed the model of the first church at Jerusalem ; according to this model 
any body of baptized believers may make and fashion as many churches as 
they like, in the same way as an artist may imitate in his paintings the 
types already created, but cannot himself create anything new. They do 
not create a new model, for these models have existed from the founding 
of the first church at Jerusalem, and Baptists in fashioning churches 
fashion them after the model furnished by Christ himself. 

The best reason why Baptist church government is the one suited for the 
great mass of mankind is, that it is an intelligent government. The mass of 
mankind understand it, and they hardly understand any other system. Ask 
an ordinary Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian or Catholic to give you a 
succinct account of the detailed workings of their respective systems and he 
would be at a loss to do so. It is often said that church people are ruled by 
their imaginations ; but it would be truer to say that they are governed by 
the weakness of their imaginations. The nature of a complex, written church 
constitution, the various church judicatories, high and low, the functions of 
the various orders of the ministry, the play of the various classes, the pas- 
Biveness of the masses, the unseen formation of a guiding opinion, are com- 
plex facts, difficult to know, and easy to mistake. But the action of a single 



32 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

Baptist cliurch, tlie fact of an assembled body of men and women deliber- 
ating upon a practical question of fact to be then and there decided, are 
easy ideas ; anybody can make them out, and no one can ever forget them. 
Here we discern a government in which there is no complexity; and little 
or no preconceived system, still less any idea of outside domination, but in 
which the main-spring of obedience on the part of the membership consists 
in their personal feeling and reverence towards a government ruled by 
themselves, for themselves. Baptists are as an intelligent body of people aa 
live in the world, but we have whole classes, with their plain sense and slow 
imaginations, unable to comprehend the idea of a written church constitu- 
tion, a written system of church laws — unable to feel the least attachment 
or reverence to impersonal laws, except such as God has made and delivered 
to man. 

In laying the foundations of the churches of Christ the apostles had their 
own work assigned them by Christ. That work was the fashioning of a 
yoke to be laid upon all who came under the law of the gospel of Christ — 
a yoke, however, easy to be borne. We as His disciples have only to take 
upon ourselves that yoke and be content to wear it. Baptists imitate what 
is before their eyes. They do not go about seeking which is the best form 
of government. They do not imitate the apostolic form because it is only 
one among many they see laid down in the Scriptures — one form among 
others, all of which are equally divine and one of which seems better than 
the rest. Be it remembered that the old adage says : " Whoever speaks two 
languages is a rascal," and it rightly represents the feeling of Baptists about 
church polity. Different forms of church government have no place in the 
law of the gospel. The early disciples had no conception of that kind of 
development which in the end would overthrow those original types and 
upon the ruins thereof others would be set up. They did not so much as 
reject the idea; they did not even entertain the idea. Those original 
churches are just the same to-day. Since ecclesiastical history began they 
have always been what they are now. The models in this form of polity do 
not improve ; there is no basis upon which to build a new form of govern- 
ment, and much less the materials to put up anything new. Only post- 
apostolic forms of church government advance, are reformed and are 
*' evolved." They have made their little progress in a hundred different 
ways ; they have framed different churches with infinite worldly assiduity ; 
they have, so to speak, built their churches with human hands, and stand off 
and point to them and say. Behold ! see what we have wrought ! The thing 
to acquire was, a polity first — what sort of polity was immaterial ; a written 
law first — what sort of law was secondary ; a person or set of persons to pay 
obedience to — though who he is, or they are, by comparison it does not 
matter. 

By a law, of which we know no reason, but which is among the first by 
which God guides and governs His churches, there is a tendency in succeed- 
ing Baptist churches to be like the first models, and yet a tendency also in 
the later churches to differ from the former. In certain respects each gen- 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 33 

eration of churclies is not like the last generation ; and in certain other re- 
spects they are like the last. In point of polity they are alike ; in point of 
ethical development they are different. The peculiarity of politic develop- 
ment is to kill out changes and varieties at the birth of them, and before 
they can develop. But the fixed customary rules of ethics which the 
churches encourage and which they tolerate are imposed on all the member- 
ship, whether it suits them or not. In other words, Baptists never change 
the government of the churches, while the practices, the manners and cus- 
toms change, but they change with remarkable slowness and with studied 
caution. In this direction alone are progress and development possible. Gov- 
ernment is the fixed and unchangeable part of church polity, which we look 
at as so ancient, which has descended to us from the apostles unaltered and 
unalterable. Baptists in their simplicity and in their humility are too fond 
of the ancient form of church polity, too credulous of its completeness and 
perfection, too angry and impatient at the pain of new thoughts, to be able 
to bear easily with the idea of changes. Baptists and Baptist churches are 
the custodians of the models which Christ left by which to shape his 
churches throughout all time. These churches erected after these models 
present themselves to our minds as something venerable and unchangeable, 
something delivered by Christ himself. Naturally, therefore, Baptists hate 
new ideas of church polity, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the man 
who suggests or brings it about. 

The monarchical idea of church polity, is that institution peculiar to 
Koman Catholics, from which all others have copied, including Episcopa- 
lians, Methodists, and Presbyterians. It would include the whole Christian 
world in its organization. It also solves the question of the relation of 
the local churches within its jurisdiction; in fact, in the complete develop- 
ment of its principle there can be no local church, except in the form of a 
subservient agency. In the first place, it must sacrifice the liberty of the 
individual, as v/ell as of the individual church. Uniformity is its deepest 
law ; and, therefore, its rule of individual conduct must be, that what is not 
expressly permitted by the church, is forbidden. In the second place, it 
cannot popularize its government. Unity and fixedness of purpose, in the 
place of liberty and variety, must reign always, and everywhere. In the 
long run, as history has fully demonstrated, this will stifle and destroy the 
capacity of the individual Christian. His education and development must 
not only be neglected, but hindered and prevented, in order that his 
unquestioned obedience may be secured and preserved. In the third place, 
the universal church must suppress all local ecclesiastical autonomy. Their 
written law must be one and the same in every place, and for every part of the 
denomination. In the fourth place, it must ignore and destroy all religious 
liberty and individual differences, for that, above all things, is its mission, 
its effect, and its significance. They, with all their genius and aptitude for 
devising schemes of church polity, never in practice have found the remedy 
for these failings, and been able to reconcile uniformity with variety, church 
sovereignty with religious liberty. Ecclesiastical government has always 
3 



34 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

been to them, especially the Catholics, a personal affair, and they have never 
appeared to be conscious of committing any ecclesiastical wrong in using its 
powers — even in the use of the temporal sword—for the personal interests 
of the church. We conclude then that this ecclesiastical freedom from 
absolute arbitrary power is so necessary to, and closely joined with, a 
church's preservation, that it cannot part with it, except it forfeits its preser- 
vation and church state and life altogether ; for a church of Christ, having 
the power of its own life in its own hands, cannot by compact, or its own 
consent, subject itself to any one, nor put itself under the absolute arbitrary 
power of another, to take away its autonomy when he pleases. A church 
cannot give more power than it has itself, and he that cannot take away his 
own life, cannot give another power over it. 

If this form of church government is a mere perversion of the apostolic 
polity, being a usurpation of more power than is consistent with the early 
churches, they gave it to themselves, and God renounces the institution of it 
as he renounced the government of the tribe of Judah, who chose a king 
contrary to that form of government which he delivered to them. Ye have 
chosen kings, but not by me ; and princes, but I know them not. He gave 
them a law of liberty, and if they fell into shame and miser}^ that accom- 
pany slavery, it was their own work. Those who have adopted these forms 
were not obliged to have priests and popes to rule over them. As God 
announced to Israel the misery they would bring upon themselves by 
departing from the law of Moses, so has he demonstrated to these people the 
unwisdom and folly in overthrowing the governments of his free churches, 
and uniting them in a consolidated form, for rule and government. This 
ecclesiastical monarchy, which our brethren think to be so majestic, is not 
only displeasing to God, and so inconsistent with his reign over them, but it 
has aggravated all the religious intolerance and crimes which the world has 
ever seen. One of the objects of the establishment of free and independ- 
ent churches was that there should not be massed into the hands of one 
man, or a few, that power which, once consolidated, has never yet failed to 
vent its fury upon the world, and has shed more Christian blood than all 
the pagans that were ever in the world besides. For the pope says there 
are two swords, the one temporal and the other spiritual, and both of them 
were given to Peter, and to his successors. If it be good for a church to 
live under such a power, why did not Christ of his own goodness institute 
it ? Did his wisdom and love to his people fail ? If it was from the Lord, 
was it not good ? If good, why was it not in the beginning ? 

On the other hand, if Christ established his churches upon the free and 
independent basis, in the beginning, was it not good then, and if so, is it not 
so forever ? Did good proceed from one root then, and from another now ? 
No trace of the church universal, for government, can be found in the New 
Testament. No candid man will deny but that Baptist churches conform in 
every essential respect to those in the times of the apostles. If they do not, 
we stand ready to reform them, and make them exact models of those 
churches. Wherefore, is it possible that these churches which are from 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 35 

Christ, can be contrary to his will, and can he be offended with those who 
desire to live in a conformity to his will? But if Christ did neither, by a 
general and perpetual ordiuance of the gospel, establish over all the churches 
an ecclesiastical monarchy, nor prescribed it to his people by a particular 
command, it was purely man's creature, the production of his own fancy, 
contrived in wickedness and brought forth in iniquit}^; an idol, a golden 
calf, set up by themselves to their own destruction, in imitation of the priest- 
craft of the Jewish regime. If it was set up by the apostles, it is nowhere 
to be seen, either in the examples, or teachings of the apostles, or the 
churches. If a covenant or command be pretended, the nature and extent 
of the obligation can only be known by the contents expressed, or the true 
intention of it. If there be a general command given, or agreed upon, 
given by Christ to his apostles, to which all churches must submit, it were 
good to know where it may be found in the Scriptures, and by whose 
authority it was established, and then we can examine the sense of it. If 
no such appear, we may rationally look upon those as usurpers who go about 
from thence to derive a right. And as that which does not appear is as if 
it were not, v/e may justly conclude there was no such government set up by 
the apostles. 

Where then does supreme ecclesiastical power rest? Where then does 
church sovereignty reside? Where else can it be but in the local church? 
The churches of Christ never can delegate or pledge away their sovereign- 
ties, and of course, never have done so. It cannot do so by a forced 
union of a thousand little church sovereignties ; nor is each local church 
possessed of a fragment of sovereignty. Church sovereignty has nothing 
to do with the union of many churches for government, nor anything 
whatever to do with the individual member be he layman or minister. 
Catholics, Episcopalians, jNIethodists and Presbyterians form a joint stock 
sovereignty company and delegate this sovereignty to a single man or body 
of men for both legislation and government. It appears that church 
sovereignty is a power and energy naturally and necessarily inherent in the 
local church ; it only exists in and with a church, it cannot pass from it, it 
is the vital principle of the church. The assertion that a church of Christ 
can divest itself of its sovereign power, and delegate it to some other body 
of men, is as absurd and contradictory in itself, and can be as little 
imagined, as to suppose that it is possible for a human being to divest him- 
self of his own being and merge it into that of some one else. It is equally 
absurd to suppose r human individual, as a pope or bishop, can be a 
sovereign over a church of Christ. Since the churches are constantly 
receiving accretions they never cease, and since Avith them their necessity of 
existence never ceases, for Christ has said that the gates of hell shall not 
prevail against them, so is the sovereign power never exhausted or becomes 
extinct, it being the never-ceasing fountain and last resort of all ecclesias- 
tioal power on earth. This is the true source of Baptist church succession 
— that principle so near and dear to every Baptist heart. 

The principle that our system of church government is hereditary, or that 



86 

there lias been a regular succession of Baptist churches coming down in a 
line from the apostolic churches, has a strong hold upon the Baptists 
of America, and while it is impossible, owing to the missing links in ecclesi- 
astical history, to prove this position, yet there is every cause to believe it is 
true. This we do know that Christ graciously delivered to his apostles the 
great Magna Charter for the establishment of his churches, and that same 
Charter is with us to-day, and we have kept it unaltered and unimpaired to 
this blessed day of his grace. We do not have to apply to popes nor 
bishops, nor to churches, nor to synods, nor to councils for the privilege 
of using this charter to build churches, but it is ever present to be used for 
the building of a house for the Lord. It was framed not for a single day 
nor a single generation, but it is the fruit of Christ's own divine wisdom, and 
is the result of the experience of many ages, yea of all the ages since it 
came from his plastic hands, and is designed for the duration and permanence 
of all time, till he comes again. Some have laid violent hands upon it and 
with sacrilegious audacity have altered and perverted it, but Baptists have 
ever held it inviolate. Such institutions as these churches having so lengthy 
a line of succession cannot be radically altered by any process short of insig- 
nificant schisms which leave the original body in possession of the original char- 
ter and government, however persuasive the voice may be in favor of change. 
So vast is the number of individuals and churches interested in keeping 
these sacred charters inviolate, so well habituated are they, and consequently 
so deeply attached to these recognized ancient forms and usages customarily 
in use, that any vital alteration or reconstruction of them seems little short 
of treason and sacrilege, and the most conclusive reasons urged in favor of it 
are scarcely comprehensible. Doubtless there has always been a never-inter- 
rupted succession of men from the apostles' times, believing, professing and 
practicing such doctrines as the Baptists now teach ; and it is not incredible 
to believe, though it may not be easy of proof, that there has been extant in 
the world, likewise, a never-interrupted system of churches which has been 
the custodian of that doctrine. By this divine testimony Baptists are infalli- 
bly assured that Christ's words have been verified that the gates of hell shall 
not prevail against it. In this sublime assurance of our Saviour is the 
infallible testimony of that supreme verity which neither can deceive nor be 
deceived. 

This is the only divine system of ecclesiastical government upon earth. It 
has a long chain of history which anchors in the laws of the gospel. His- 
torians will tell you that it is a universal law of moral and intellectual 
creation with no exception, that the higher and nobler the form of govern- 
ment, whether human or divine, to be produced or obtained, the longer and 
more varied is the chain of processes, and the more organic are these pro- 
cesses by which they are matured. Can any man who is at all acquainted 
with ecclesiastical history deny that there has been extant in the world a 
peculiar people holding to our system of church government coming down 
from the apostles ? Man-made systems of church polity start into existence 
seemingly perfect, all at once, so soon as the necessary agents from without 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 37 

exist, but even in a system like this it takes a long time, and requires a 
variety of processes, one connected with the other, before it can become 
developed and matured. The same principle obtains in the political world. 
The English cystem of government, for instance, was planted a thousand 
years, or more, ago, and has been maturing and developing ever since. This 
system of political government, strange to say, had its commencement in 
very much the same way that our Baptist churches took their start — that is 
without a written constitution to fetter its growth and development. It 
is without doubt the most conservative and at the same time the most stable 
government in the world. Nothing short of a veritable revolution could 
change one important feature in it, not even to remove any abuse of power 
there may be in the system. It is founded upon actual experience and con- 
fidence. All power, whether political or ecclesiastical, must repose in 
confidence in those who are to carry out that power — the confidence of 
common sense and moral sense. Confidence, not indeed an unlimited confi- 
dence, must be the last vital spark which makes a prescribed action in 
government a living thing. 

It should be stated here, in laying down these rudimentary principles, 
that, as the churches were gradually being formed out of individual Chris- 
tians which constituted the primitive churches, the claims of the individual 
being towards an independent existence became progressively manifested in 
a variety of ways. These claims were enforced, partly by the growing 
moral sentiments of the bulk of the church, as these spontaneously developed 
themselves under the fostering influences of ecclesiastical life, and partly by 
the organized force of the whole church, expressed in ethical rules for its 
government. At first the personal claims of each member of the church 
were the mere outward form in which the tendency to individualistic, as 
contrasted with amalgamated, existence, clothes itself. So far as their free- 
dom of thought and action were restricted, so far were the possibilities of 
their individual existence reduced ; and when these principles were fettered 
on every side, these possibilities became annihilated. In other words, the 
life of the Christian being loses his essential characteristics, and it becomes 
accustomed to a mere phase of physical life. At the first birth of the 
church, however, the growth of the liberty of the individual is the only test 
of the possibility of the spiritual life. Yet afterwards, when the conception of 
individual liberty has been definitely framed, and the enjoyment of it in 
the church has been once so largely diffused as to secure the permanency of 
the church upon a Scriptural basis, the curtailment of individual liberty is 
not only compatible with the highest moral attainment in them, but may 
prove the condition for their loftiest development. Even here, however, the 
loss of Christian liberty, to the extent to which it exists, implies a degrada- 
tion of the church, and, if persisted in to its fullest extent, can only lead to 
its extinction as a church of Christ. 

Are these theories concerning ecclesiastical government, these maxims, 
substantial truths? that is, truths on which we can further build, or from 
which we can deduce further truths as binding as a system of church gov- 



38 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUP.ISPEUDENCE ; 

eminent founded upon a written constitution ? or are they rather theoretical 
technicalities, framed and worded ingeniously, perhaps, to complete and 
round out a system, to give it that logical symmetry which gives, at least, 
an apparent finish to a system, and for the sake of which we find that, in 
all the theoretic systems which human reason has reared, men have resorted 
to many fictions. If the position herein taken be tenable, and is true, we 
may draw legitimate consequences from it; if it be a myth, a summing up of 
what has been stated by way of a simile, then we must stop with its state- 
ment, or we shall expose ourselves to the ridicule of all intelligent Baptists. 
But we must remember that the apostles left no written constitution for the 
formation of the churches, and hence Baptists have never felt at liberty to 
formulate one ; they left no written code of laws, except a few very meagre 
ones, specifically setting forth how they should be governed, hence Baptists 
have never felt at liberty to prescribe one. It is not enough to say that 
we are to go to the Scriptures for all the laws now in force, for we find them 
not, neither did Christ ever intend that the apostles should prescribe them. 
A specific form of government was given to us, but the rules of ethics, by 
which it was to be run and kept in motion, were left to the common sense 
of the membership of the churches. This being true, there is but one legiti- 
mate source from which ecclesiastical laws can spring— that is, custom and 
usage, which is nothing more or less than the unwritten expression of the 
denominational will, and especially that of the churches. 

The fundamental features of these churches may be summarized in the 
following propositions : I. Each church is a community of baptized believers, 
living at a certain locality, under a constituted government on the basis of 
perfect equality, and each church remaining independent of all others in all 
matters pertaining to local self-government. II. Each church may consist 
of not less than two persons, nor more than can conveniently assemble at 
one place, to worship together and hear the preaching of the gospel by one 
pastor. III. Each church acting through its members, is a moral person, 
having rights and duties. IV. A general conference, assembly or conven- 
tion, formed for any purpose whatever, is not a church and has no ecclesi- 
astical functions or status. V. Each church is sovereign as soon as it is reg- 
ularly constituted, which consists in its right of independent action, without 
reference to the will of any other church. VI. Each church may lose its 
sovereignty by being dissolved, or united with another church of the same 
faith and order, in which latter case the church receiving the dissolved church 
will become entitled to all the rights and bound to all the obligations of the 
church thus annexed or united. VII. Each church is free to grant or refuse 
recognition to a newly constituted church. VIII. Each church is a quasi 
incorporation, although not formally incorporated, may sue and be sued at law, 
and may acquire property by purchase, gift, devise or descent. IX. Each 
church elects its own pastor and deacons, and calls and ordains its own min- 
isters, who are equal in rank and authority ; with power to fill vacancies, as 
often as they occur, by election from among their respective members, and 
. with the further power to depose from office for cause. X. To each chiirch 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 39 

13 committed the duty of administering tlie ordinances, of preaching the gos- 
pel through its ministers, and sending the same to the uttermost parts of the 
world. XL To maintain order and decorum within its own body, to the 
end that the doctrines may be kept pure. XII. Unanimity in the church 
is made essential to every public act, which said unanimity is made manifest 
by the rule of the majority of each church, the minority acquiescing therein. 
XIII. Each church has power to appoint and convene all subordinate coun- 
cils and committees for special purposes, but no such subordinate bodies 
have any authority over the church. XIV. Each church, when convened 
in regular conference, is open to the free discussion of all lawful questions, 
but the church alone decides them. XV. In each church is vested supreme 
ecclesiastical authority under the laws of the gospel, and has no power to 
delegate that authority, or any part of it. XVI. Experiencing the neces- 
sity of inter-church dependence for a general co-operation in the spread of 
the gospel, each church stands ready to join in voluntary associations and 
general conventions for that purpose alone. 

These several propositions will be considered in this treatise, but without 
following the precise order in which they are here stated. 

These rudimentary tenets of Baptist church polity are here brought for- 
ward and emphasized as essential for the fixing of the corner-stone of the 
churches of Christ. I maintain that these principles underlying Baptist 
church government have been in existence ever since the apostolic churches 
were first established. This is to be proved not merely by showing the re- 
semblance between the apostolic churches and our Baptist churches of to-day, 
but by making good the assertion that the epoch when those first churches 
were founded is the epoch when our Baptist churches commenced. For this 
purpose it is absolutely necessary to analyze the elementary principles of our 
churches, to trace the separate current of each to its primary sources, and to 
watch the processes of their intermingling. If our Baptist churches of to- 
day did not have their commencement with the apostles, when did they 
commence, and by whom were they founded ? Our eminent ecclesiastical 
historians can with unerring certainty put their fingers upon the man who 
originated all post-apostolic churches and point out the places and the times 
where all such organizations had their births and the peculiar circumstances 
under which they sprang up. Baptist churches have no Constantine, no 
Henry VIIL, no Wesley, no Calvin, no Luther and no Campbell. No, not 
even a John the Baptist have they as the founder of their churches, and if 
they have not Christ and his apostles as the originators of their system it is 
beyond the ken of the keenest ecclesiastical historian to tell when they com- 
menced and who gave these mysterious churches a being. He who has the 
knowledge of certain great leading ecclesiastical principles firmly fixed in 
his mind, has a basis between and around which he can naturally fix and 
group all the ecclesiastical principles and historical facts necessary to a 
proper treatment of the subject. 

Not only am I conscientious in the treatment of this subject from this 
standpoint, but I verily believe that the hand of God can be traced in it. 



40 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

Baptist church government, having its counterpart in the apostolic churches, 
is the longest line of consecutive government now extant in the world. For, 
not only do custom and usage, which is the basis of our Baptist institutions, 
enable us to work in long-established grooves, with the smallest amount of 
friction and obstruction ; but the mere fact of the long existence of a famil- 
iar usage so far fashioned in its own image in the denominational mind, and 
in the conscience of a people, that often our churches have a hard and 
unpopular task to perform in assaulting heresies and other indefensible 
abuses. The large mass of Baptists, being so unused to ecclesiastical 
change, except such as are the most cautious, slow and tentative kind, have 
their sentiments of loyality to, and reverence of, apostolic forms and doc- 
trines outraged by the sudden introduction of what is new and unfamiliar. 
Our minds have been trained and pruned in the school of experience in 
such a way as to be unable to conceive, as a mere intellectual people, a 
better ordered system of church government than that in which the apostles 
lived, and in which we have, under the blessing of God, ever kept ourselves. 
How far these fundamental elements of ecclesiastical polity, ascertained in 
the preceding pages, may practically expand in the future progress of the 
churches, no human mind can say, but they are elements towards a greater 
and fuller acknowledgment of which each step in the progress of ecclesiastical 
polity tends, and, therefore, belong to the very nature of the churches of 
Christ. Under this divine system, our cherished Baptist institutions have 
never suffered radical changes in any part of the globe by any process short 
of schismatic revolution, however persuasive the voice in favor of change. 
So vast is the countless number of Baptists interested in this beautiful form 
of polity, so well habituated are they, so well indoctrinated are they, and, 
consequently, so deeply attached to the recognized forms, customs, and 
usages, customarily in vogue — all of which have been so long established 
and acquiesced in — that any vital reconstruction of them, any innovating 
processes set on foot to overturn them, would seem little short of sacrilege 
and treason against God, and the most conclusive reasons in favor of change 
are scarcely comprehensible. 

These, then, are some of the fundamental elements of ecclesiastical polity^ 
which I have undertaken to open up and unfold from the standpoint of a 
Baptist. Every government, whether secular or divine, has to start from 
some axioms that are founded upon truths, which must be self-evident in 
their nature. The very meaning of proof involves its starting from, and 
relying on, previously acknowledged truths. Especially is this the case 
with Baptist church polity, being alone rooted, grounded, and nurtured in 
the laws of the gospel. Be not surprised when I tell you that it has 
required over eighteen hundred years before so simple an institution as that 
of Baptist church government could be clearly developed to its present 
degree of perfection. Until this development and perfection, its difficult 
nature was such that it could not be expected to be much cultivated. 
Besides the writings of Pedo-Baptist authors, combined with the erroneous 
idea that there is neither sense nor science in Baptist church polity, very 



OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 41 

naturally stood in the way of free inquiry into the elements of ecclesiastical 
jurisprudence. But now, since Baptists have become the foremost cham- 
pions of popular education in the world, they are no longer willing to resort 
to Pedo-Baptist writers for a knowledge of these important things, but feel 
constrained to follow their own teachings upon the subject, and are able to 
lay down principles and precepts in accordance with the laws of the gospel of 
Christ, not only for their own edification, but for the information of others, 
who may wish to know the truth as it is taught in the Scriptures. Especially 
am I anxious that the young Baptists of the present day may become inter- 
ested in this beautiful study, for in it they will find much food for reflection. 

Thus we have come to the conclusion of this our introductory chapter. 
If the reader will have the patience to follow me over the whole field of this 
vast subject, I will be pleased, though he may not in all things agree with 
me in its treatment. I will try to carry light and order into a subject which 
heretofore has been shrouded to some extent in confusion, and will endeavor 
to bring a line of argument which reaches moral certainty into a region 
which before was given over to random guess-work. With many misgivings 
as to my own ability to treat Baptist church government scientifically, yet I 
think I may demonstrate the fact that it may be treated as a science, and 
may be placed on a firm basis, from which it is impossible to believe that it 
can be dislodged. 

This feeble attempt to treat Baptist church government as a science may, 
indeed, reveal to us several stages of the development and growth of our 
churches for which we have no recorded historic evidence, but which it makes 
far more certain than much which professes to rest on recorded evidence. It 
will teach us facts and principles about which no external proof can be had, 
but for which the internal proof, when once stated, is absolutely irresistible. 
For my own part, as a Baptist who has studied this deep subject from every 
possible standpoint, I firmly believe that this manner of its treatment has 
brought to light a vast common stock of fundamental principles, the ground- 
work of which is to be found in the law of God alone. It is by this method 
that true apostolic church government must be tested, and is the safeguard 
against all unscientific trea.tment of the subject — against running, for instance, 
to written books of discipline cunningly devised by human wisdom. The 
scientific method is first to go back to the Scriptures for a starting-point, and 
find out what there is in this sacred text which can be fairly set down as 
springing from that common stock. When this is clearly made out, we are 
then in a position to determine what part of ecclesiastical government is due 
to independent invention, since the days of the apostles, and what part, if 
any, is due to importation from other systems. Up to this time in the his- 
tory of Baptist churches the task of reducing these fundamental principles 
to systematic shape without injuriously innovating on Bible law and institu- 
tions has been so difficult that it is no wonder that it has, in fact, never been 
proceeded with except under great embarrassments. But now since these 
delightful studies have become the order of the day the task is not so hazard- 
ous and not so difficult of performance. 



42 A TBEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; 



CHAPTER II. 

VIEW OF THE ORIGIN AND ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST; 
THE TRUE NATURE OF APOSTOLIC CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 

"l^FOTHING can be more interesting to a Baptist than to study the 
JLM fundamental principles underlying the primitive form of church 
government. It is of great importance to know what kind of laws are used 
in the churches and the process in which the laws are generated ; but the 
machinery by which the laws are put in operation is equally important. 
Let us call the latter the government of the churches. Baptist church gov- 
ernment is that state in which ecclesiastical power wholly and entirely rests 
in a local organic church. It is that kind of government which has a 
separate organism, an organic life, in which the separate functions of gov- 
ernment have their independent action, yet are by the general organism 
united into one living system. 

Churches, without ecclesiastical power, without a governmental polity, are 
already on the road to anarchy. A sincere reverence for our churches 
demands imperatively that we should understand the principles upon which 
our polity rests, and our ecclesiastical obligations, both that we may preserve 
forever our form of government, and that we may be able to prize, cherish 
and defend this God- given boon, lest we lose it for want of a true knowl- 
edge of the nature of it. It is a matter of regret that so few distinguished 
men of our denomination have written exclusively on the principles of 
Baptist church polity or the first elements of the churches. The attention 
of our authors has been directed, almost wholly, to the investigation of those 
subjects which are more or less closely connected with the history and 
theology of the churches, to the exclusion of those principles of government 
which have exercised such a powerful influence upon, not only the churches 
of Christ, but upon the nations of the earth. 

We believe, indeed we know, that no church can endure, if it has not a 
divine origin and a religious basis, and besides if it bears not a name taken 
from the natural language, originating itself, without any anterior and public 
deliberation. Hence the word Baptist is most appropriate as showing one 
of the characteristic practices of this great people. Sometimes God alone 
assumes the right of conferring a name. Indeed he has named all things, 
since he has created all things of a divine nature. Those personages whom 
God has thought proper to name, the name always relates to the functions 
they perform. He has said that in his future kingdom he would give them 
a ne^v name expressive of their exploits. This is seen in baptism ; the 
name expresses what it is, and in this matter there is nothing arbitrary. It 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 43 

is witli churches as with individuals ; there are some churches which have 
no name, or at least a meaningless name, and there are others which have 
many. The name never bears any proportion to the thing; the thing 
always dignifies the name. It is necessary that the name germinate, so to 
speak; otherwise the name is false. There are two infallible rules for 
judging all human creations of whatever kind they may be, the basis and 
the name. If the basis is purely human, the edifice cannot stand, and the 
more men there be who engage in building upon this foundation, the 
more deliberation, the more frail will the institution be. How much soever 
of pains we take, we cannot build a divine house upon a human foundation. 
Except the Lord build the house they labor in vain who build it. 

The most central idea in ecclesiastical polity is that of the church, and if 
it were once clearly ascertained what is and what is not comprehended under 
this term, many of the most harassing misunderstandings appertaining to the 
subject would be avoided. It will not do to deal with the problem of church 
government as if it were a blank sheet of paper to be written upon and 
filled out to suit the whims of every body of men who may choose to call 
themselves a church of Christ, having as many kinds of churches as there 
are whims of the whimsical. They write and speak as if Christ and his 
apostles established no certain form of polity, and that it only needed a con- 
scious efibrt on the part of any given set of men to establish a church of 
their own faith and order, or to change at will all the formulas and condi- 
tions in which the churches of Christ primitively subsisted. The notion of 
the church as a distinct independent unit is, in fact, a product of purely 
Bible development, and on this ground it is seriously doubted whether any- 
thing else is a valid church of Christ. It is the inherent peculiarity of eccle- 
siastical phenomena that the experience on which a knowledge of them rests 
has to be gathered from a very circumscribed field, and that the mere exist- 
ence of any such field at all is a special attainment of advancing civilization. 
Thus the church in the stricter modern signification of the term as an eccle- 
siastical unit, independent in itself, differs at once from the Pedo-Baptist idea 
which attempts to build up a hierarchy of churches, all united under one 
common head for government. The primitive notion of a church can never 
be brought into clear consciousness till a number of sister churches present 
themselves side by side, and each of them, by enforcing its own rules and 
regulations, manifested to itself and to the world its own independence, per- 
sonality and integral unity. The church, in the Bible sense of the term, 
carries with it the idea of complete autonomy, and of organization for pur- 
poses of government. Thus a series of aflEiliated ideas and terms at once 
came to the surface such as ecclesiastical laws, rights, privileges and duties. 

It is not too much to say that the influence of speculative writers upon 
ecclesiastical jurisprudence in the Methodist and Presbyterian churches is at 
this time corapn.ratively small. In the days of Wesley and Calvin, when 
their works and a few other treatises in the infancy of those churches were 
almost the only source from which anything on the subject of church law 
could be derived, they had the greatest reverence paid their opinions. But 



44 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

now in those systems when their books of discipline and digests are loaded 
down with thousands of decisions and precedents coming from their courts 
of appeal, a man who ignores them, and appeals to theory or to general 
principles laid down by text writers instead of facts, must not expect to re- 
ceive any great attention. Under the system practiced by Baptists the only 
resort we have to find out what is true church law, is the Bible itself as the 
great fountain of all law, and interpreted by our eminent text-writers, 
which to be binding, the law must have passed under the scrutiny of those 
learned in such matters, and have received the assent of all the churches, 
which are to be bound by it. This assent may be expressed, as by the ac- 
knowledged concurrence of the churches, or may be implied from estab- 
lished custom and usage. The inquiry must then be, what are the princi- 
ples which ought to, and not what shall regulate the mutual relations of the 
churches ? The Bible alone furnishes that immutable law which mud be 
recognized by the churches as binding at all times and under all circum- 
stances. Those principles laid down by commentators upon ecclesiastical law 
are only good laws for which we can give good reasons, and those bad 
which cannot be deduced from the sacred text of the Scrij)tures. 

The Scriptures, the usages and customary laws of the churches, the 
opinions of Baptists learned in ecclesiastical law, as well as the observations 
of common sense and reason, are in truth the only materials out of which 
the science of true church jurisprudence is formed ; and those vv^ho neglect 
them are justly chargeable with a vain attempt to philosophize without regard 
to facts and experience, which is the sole basis of all true philosophy. 

No Baptist author has heretofore attempted to contribute to the body 
of our literature a work upon the elementary and scientific principles 
of Baptist church government. The subject has not been treated of with 
that care which it demands, and I am quite sure that the theoretical view of 
the science has been quite neglected, not so much from a want of ability on 
the part of our Baptist authors to expound it, as to a misunderstanding of its 
importanco in its bearings upon true church polity. Therefore in that which 
follows it will be our object to divest true church government of its outward 
apparel, so as to view the wonderful creation with all its nerves, bones, 
muscles, and, above all, so to speak, its thoughts and feelings. Certainly 
nothing can be more instructive than to search out the first obscure and 
scanty fountain of those ecclesiastical principles which now water and 
enrich the great Baptist denomination of the world, v/hich has, under the 
peculiar blessing of God, spread itself, and is spreading itself, wherever the 
gospel of the Prince of Peace has found its way, softened and mellowed by 
peace and religion, and good will to mankind, and improved and exalted by 
the love of the truth, as it is in the great Head of the church. 

The triumph of the science of all true church government is but to verify 
the facts found in the Scriptures, and to draw from their connection the 
inductions that reveal the laws to be obeyed by church members under pain 
of being the more miserable the less they shall know or obey them. The 
man who takes up his pen to delineate these laws has before him the his- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 45 

torical experience of eighteen Christian centuries, since these churches were 
founded. From that time Baptists have been laboring in the pulpit, the pew 
and in the studio to solve the great question of true church government, and 
how, under this gospel reign, souls may be saved. The triumphs of this 
sect, everywhere spoken against, under what name soever they may have 
lived and struggled, all supply us with a larger induction than John the 
Baptist ever dreamed of. A great and free church like that of the Baptists 
is the work of many ages, of stupendous characters, of faithful ministers 
who have had enough of grace in their hearts to resist the blandishments of 
priestly preferment and power. To form, support, and bring such to 
maturity, the developing influences must have stretched over many laborious 
years. We reap the fruits of all the ecclesiastical experience which has cost 
to our Baptist fathers time, care and much anxiety. 

The fundamental principles which underlie this peculiar kind of church 
polity is unlike that of all others in that it is entirely unwritten. In the 
infancy of the churches it was practiced something like twelve years before 
any book of the New Testament was written, and about sixty before the 
whole was written, and long before many of the books of the New Testament 
were agreed on as being canonical. Hence we are drawn to the conclusion 
that the fundamental principles of ecclesiastical government existed before 
all written law; that these principles are, and can only be, the develop- 
ment of an unwritten pre-existing charter and oral instructions given by 
Christ to his apostles to found this church, and to erect therein a govern- 
ment suitable to the end for which it was designed. That which in true 
church government is most essential, most intrinsically institutional and 
fundamental, was not at first, nor is it now written, and could not be without 
endangering the church itself, that the weakness and fragility of the con- 
stitutions of the various post-apostolical churches we see now set up in the 
world are actually in proportion to the multiplicity of their written laws 
and constitutional articles. It is about as reasonable to believe and expect 
that letters, thrown into the air, would, on falling to the ground, arrange 
themselves in such a manner as to form a true system of church government, 
as to suppose that a man, or set of men, a church or a set of churches could 
formulate a system that in any respect would conform to that Divine system 
established by our Saviour and his apostles. Man may plant an acorn, cul- 
tivate and water it, but he does not make the acorn, nor does he make the 
oaks from which they grow because he witnesses their growth and perfection. 
This is, in a sense, as if the trowel should believe itself tlie architect, but 
man is no less an instrument in the hands of God to plant his churches after 
the patterns we see in the Bible where it may be said with equal truth that 
man does everything, and yet does nothing, if you will allow the paradox. 

No error has done more to injure the cause of Christianity than that 
fundamental error of all errors to the effect that an ecclesiastical constitu- 
tion could be written, whilst reason and experience, as well as the Scriptures 
all unite in establishing the fact, that the constitution of Christ's churches 
is a Divine work, and that that which is most fundamental in the laws of 



46 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

a true cliurcli is peculiarly what cannot be written. When it is asked in 
what book the laws of Christ's churches are written ? let it be answered 
truthfully, that they are written in the hearts of the Baptists of the world. 
Those belonging to other systems of church government suppose, in effect, 
that the multitudinous laws humanly made, upon which rests their polity, 
exist only because they are written; if this be true then any authority 
whatever which may have written it, has the right to annul it, and such a 
law will not have any of that character of sacredness and immutability 
which distinguishes it from ordinary human laws. The essence of Baptist 
church jurisprudence is, that no one has the right to abolish it ; how can 
such a law be considered immutable and above all, if any one has made it ? 
The universal argument of all Baptists is, that it is impossible, owing to the 
independent nature of the churches, for any one of them, or several, to 
make a v/ritten law that would bind them all ; and even if it should be 
otherwise, a covenant is not a law and binds no body, unless there is a 
superior authority by which it is guaranteed. Covenants can be enforced 
in local churches, for then we find the characteristic feature of a law in the 
expression of united wills. Even then united wills form the regulation, and 
not the law itself, which manifestly and necessarily supposes a superior will 
that makes it to be obeyed. 

At no time in the history of the world have Baptists ever assembled 
together in a body, large or small, and said : Come let us lay down the laws 
for the establishment and governr,%cnt of Baptist churches. No one of them 
ever thought of such a thing. The establishment of these peculiar institu- 
tions was the work of the apostles under the unwritten instruction of Christ 
himself. All the elements of Christian civilization, acting together and 
forming together, by their admixture and reciprocal action and combina- 
tion, have produced at length, after many centuries, the most complex unity 
and happy equilibrium of ecclesiastical government that the world has ever 
seen. Christianity itself, the greatest creation of all the ages, made for all 
men and every age, is conformed to the general principles of this same kind 
of unwritten law. Its Divine Author was certainly able to write himself, 
or to cause his doctrines to be written ; yet he did neither write it himself 
nor cause them to be written in a legislative form, as by a church, a synod 
or a conference. The New Testament, after the death of its writers, and 
even the establishment of the Christian religion, exhibits only a narration of 
admonitions, moral precepts, exhortations and censures, but in no wise a 
collection of dogmas expressed in legislative, imperative form. Why then 
did not the apostles convene a church, a synod or a conference and set them 
to work to form a written constitution, a book of discipline, or some other 
written form of words which would have rendered it unnecessary for others 
to do so afterwards ? Whatever was done afterwards in the form of govern- 
ment, polity or doctrine, are only professions of faith for its own recognition, 
as for contradicting the errors of the moment. In such as were formulated 
we only read we believe; and never, you shall believe, you shall do. Hence 
if a people should so far forget themselves as to formulate one of these 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 47 

humanly devised codes of belief, or books of canonical overtures, we may 
be sure that the religion of this people is just as apt to be false as true, for 
it is of human origin. That it has written its religious code in a paradoxysm 
of fever and impulse, and that it will be the means of ecclesiastical rot and 
decay rather than spiritual life and true development, and that it will be 
ridiculed in a little while by those for whom it was made, as possessing 
neither power nor durability and wanting in divine efficacy. 

The origin and true nature of ecclesiastical government has been, and still 
is, a greatly mooted question. Baptists and Pedo-Baptists differ widely in 
regard to it. In what respects, then, does Baptist church government have 
a distinctive character, as to its formation, when compared with other sys- 
tems ? In the first place it is entirely unwritten ; in the second place what 
is written in connection with it is found in the Scriptures alone ; and in the 
third place it is not nor can it become the legitimate subject matter of eccle- 
siastical legislation. It is the original form of church government and 
differs from the others in not being a schismatic product. In all post- 
apostolic forms of church government historical and schismatic forces are 
the more prominent and important factors in the work of their origin. They 
are all without one exception capital examples of factional schisms and divi- 
sions, and have not their origin in the original forms of the laws of the gos- 
pel. Ail of them came out of, and have sprung from the catholic form of 
church government, which in the course of this treatise will be shown to be 
an ecclesiastical usurpation — one vestige of which cannot be found in the 
New Testament Scriptures. It is no longer proper to call them gospel 
churches at all. It is, in fact, only a title of honor, without any corres- 
ponding substance. AYhen new things proceed out of old ones, it is a 
long time before we invent the new names rightly describing the new pro- 
duct. The reason why they are mistakenly called churches is a total mis- 
conception -of the true origin and nature of the churches of Christ from 
which all ecclesiastical powers originate. Of all the religionists in the world 
the Baptists have realized the church of Christ in its approximately pure and 
original character. From them the true teaching has gone out, until the 
whole world shall know the truth, and see it in the light of the Scriptures, 
and shall subject itself to the laws of the gospel. 

After much reflection upon this subject I conclude that the true theory 
respecting the origin of the polity of a gospel church, is that which starts 
from a covenant. There is no other way to explain the right which ecclesi- 
astical government has over the governed. It is founded upon a covenant, 
under the laws of the gospel, entered into between those willing to enter the 
organization for mutual worship and assistance, for which each one is willing 
to give up his own pre-conceived notions, a state in which each was supposed 
to depend upon his own will alone, and subordinate his will to that of the 
church. I believe not only in the theory of an implied or tacit covenant, 
but that all ecclesiastical law has grown out of the germ to be found in the 
covenant of a certain number of baptized believers in Christ our Saviour. 
All ecclesiastical power or polity (if indeed a distinction can be made 



48 A TREATISE UPOl^ BAPTIST CHTJUCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

between the two terms) has been founded by the will of the membership of a 
local church. From an ecclesiastical point of view, there is but one prin- 
ciple, the sovereignty of every member over himself. This sovereignty is 
called religious liberty, and where two or more baptized believers are asso- 
ciated together under a covenant to obey God's law the church begins. But 
in this association there is no abdication of individuality, but each member 
concedes a certain amount of his individuality to form the common stock or 
authority of the church. This quality is the same for all the members, and 
this identity of concession which each makes to all is called equality. The 
common stock or authority of the church is nothing but the power radiating 
over the whole church to protect it and the doctrine from attacks from 
within and from without. Hence comes what is called ecclesiastical uniou^ 
or, more properly speaking, a church covenant,., which is very much the 
same thing. A true church of Christ is that institution only which has 
originated out of the free will of the membership of those entering the 
organization, and which subsists more by covenant and acknowledgment 
than by priestly domination. If we understand, by the theory of an ecclesi- 
astical covenant, that view of a church according to which it is an 
ecclesiastically organized body of men, each of whom stands in ecclesiastical 
relation to every other member, then the theory of a church covenant is 
correct, and the only one which gives to the church its true Scriptural 
existence and continuation. 

Hence I take it that covenant is the only legitimate basis upon which 
ecclesiastical government can stand. And if any one will turn his attention 
to the formation of the apostolic churches, he will find that the idea is car- 
ried into actual practice. With examples so complete and decisive, it would 
be a very lame answer to say that churches were formed by the decree of 
some bishop or pope, or that they were the creatures of circumstances. 
Ecclesiastical government would remain forever in the mystified mystery of 
metaphysics, if we hesitated to adopt the principle of a covenant as the basis 
of church polity. Combining this doctrine with the theory, that the 
churches consist in the continuation of efforts and the distribution of func- 
tions among the membership of a local church, we get at the axioms of a 
sound Scriptural polity. Thus, in those primitive churches which existed at 
a period anterior to written history, although we cannot find anything like 
a formal covenant, such as we have in these days, to have been entered into, 
we can very readily suppose, that the minds of all entering into church 
relations, spontaneously, and without any set purpose, conspired to that end. 
That those assemblies and gatherings were organized churches, that is, col- 
lections of members in the aggregate, is abundantly sufficient to authorize 
the supposition. Certain it is we can discern far more evidences of the 
prevalence of a common will, as actuating the assemblies, than of the pre- 
valence of a common will of an individual assuming to erect them into 
churches. Every lawyer knows of tacit or implied agreements even in 
jurisprudence, and courts give the same force and authority to them which 
they do to express ones. For, although, we might not be able to find any 



OR, THE C0MM02T LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 49 

trace in those primitive churches of an express covenant, we can discover 
far more evidences of that form of organization which results from one, than 
we can of the self-government of individuals and for individuals. 

These primitive apostolic churches must have been constituted first by 
covenant of a number of believers, each with each, to form a church, and 
to be bound by the laws of the gospel under the rule of the majority of the 
church — in which primary covenant they must have been unanimous, that 
is, every one dissenting would acquiesce in the rule of the majority, under 
a further implied covenant that the ruling majority would take care of the 
church's weal, and the minority to obey all the lawful commands in further- 
ance of the good of the church. This church sovereignty is founded on 
actual covenants under the law of the gospel, and is not conferred by any 
other power. This union, so made, is what we call a church, which, in 
brief, may be defined to be two or more men, professing the true faith of the 
gospel, united as one person by a common power for the preaching and 
spread of the gospel, and is instituted with common power over all the par- 
ticular members thereof, to the common good of them all. The idea of a 
church, therefore, implies necessarily that of government, and the idea of 
government contains in it two others, the idea of an assembly of individ- 
uals, and that of a rule which is applicable to them — a rule which the individ- 
uals who submit to it have not themselves created, and to which they are 
morally bound to submit. Ino system of church government of a divine 
origin can disregard this supreme rule, otherwise they proclaim force or 
caprice as the only law of the churches. In seeking the true principle of 
church polity, we find this principle of a higher law coupled with a cove- 
nant to be the primary source of all legitimate church sovereignty and gov- 
ernment. In every church thus organized resides what is known as the 
sovereign power, which is lodged in the majority of the membership, and 
consists in the right to rule the church, that every member has transferred 
to the majority from themselves by covenant. And this majority, that is to 
rule the whole church, may in this way be able to frame the united will of 
them all to unity and concord amongst themselves. The sovereign power, 
therefore, in every church is that determinate aggregate majority of a 
church combined in the determination of any question, whom the whole 
church habitually obey ; hence, it is implied, the church only that has a 
sovereign or ruling power in itself, strictly speaking, is, or can be, inde- 
pendent. 

There are three prevalent opinions in the Christian world as to the origin 
of the churches, and I think that these divergences of opinion may be so 
classified as to reduce the apparently numerous shades of differences to three 
propositions. The first is the theological theory, the second is the social 
theory, and the third is the historical theory. The first claims that the 
churches are founded by Christ alone, the second that they are founded by 
human covenant under the laws of the gospel, and the third is that they are 
the product of an historical development. When we come to study the true 
nature of these wonderful creations we cannot escape the conclusion that 
4 



60 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDEN^CE ; 

they are the product of all three equally combined. To say that the churches 
were founded by Christ alone, without the help of human agency, would be 
to imply that he conceived and planned them in form, and left a divine char- 
ter by which they should be shaped and moulded by his apostles ; for so far 
as the record discloses he departed this life before the first organic church 
was instituted at Jerusalem. To say that the earliest disciples founded them 
by covenant alone would be to put the churches upon a human plane with, 
no divine efficacy in them. And it would be equally erroneous to contend 
that they sprang up as an historical development, without any design as to 
the form or mould they were to take — a mere chance development. It is 
true that when we take into consideration the meagerness of the rules laid 
down in the Scriptures as to how they were instituted v/e must conclude that 
their historical development had a great deal to do with their imperfect be- 
ginning through crude but improving forms of manifestation, towards a per- 
fect organization as we see them to-day. The unbiased ecclesiastical his- 
torian will not only not dispute this proposition, but he will teach that the 
churches were brought through the earliest and most difficult periods of 
their development by the power of religion, and in the forms of religion, out 
of reverence and obedience to Christ their founder. 

The origin of ecclesiastical government has been traced by other writers 
to two sources : divine right, and covenant or election. To say that a system 
of church government has its source alone in a divine right, would be the 
same as to say that those who exercise that government must prove their 
title by some miracle, or other incontestable evidence, or it must commence 
with the first ministers of Christianity, and beginning with them they are 
thus invested with the right to rule the churches, and the membership 
thereof be subject to all the views applicable to that title. So absurd is this 
pretension that I should not even notice it, if it had not been given such weight 
as to form an important feature in the works of writers uj)on ecclesiastical 
government. As before stated, the true theory is, to attribute the divine 
right to the charter which Christ gave to his disciples, by and upon which he 
authorized his churches to be instituted, blending the human right \9ith it, 
which consists in the power he gave his followers to organize the churches 
whenever and wherever they please, under a covenant to keep and obey the 
laws of the gospel. This right has descended to all Christians of like faith 
and order, from generation to generation, and still exists wherever two or 
more of them may be, without let or hindrance. From this blended 
source — the divine and the human — is all ecclesiastical power derived, for 
there is none other. 

Besides, ecclesiastical government is not a self-acting machine, which will 
go on and perform its work without human agency ; it cannot be separated 
from the human beings who fill its places, set it in motion, and regulate and 
direct its operations. So long as these are liable to err in judgment, or to 
fail in virtue, so long will church government remain largely human, and be 
liable to run into abuses, notwithstanding the divine Providence that watches 
over it. And until all men shall become so perfect as not to require to be 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 51 

restrained, all church governments professing to be free will require to be 
watched, guarded and controlled. To do this effectually requires more than 
we generally find in public virtue and public intelligence. A great majority 
of Christians are more sensible of their spiritual interests than their ecclesi- 
astical rights. Whenever the people composing our churches can be 
persuaded that it is their greatest interests to not only further their spiritual 
well-being, but to maintain their church rights, then, and then only, will 
free ecclesiastical government be safe from abuses. Human beings thus 
united in a church can only exist in human relations. They exist under 
law and government partly human and partly divine. They are bounded, 
limited and conditioned on every side by these environments. Complete 
independence is impossible for them. Absolute freedom, therefore, from 
ecclesiastical restraint, cannot consist in complete independence. By uniting 
himself to the rest he has, in advance, agreed to be obedient to the voice of 
the whole ; thus he ecclesiastically obeys himself, as a part of the whole, 
and is morally bound to obey the voice of the whole, though against his 
individual voice, so that herein a man is not as fully at liberty in a church 
as before. It must consist in the loving recognition of the limits and condi- 
tions which surround them on every side. Hence the angry chafing against 
this lawful authority must be bondage and imprisonment. One law pervades 
and animates the whole church, and becomes no longer an external restraint, 
but only a rule of free activity, unwritten except in the heart. It is the 
organization of a church on the law of human duty and love, and not the 
law of human force. A revolt against this benign authority is discord and 
anarchy ; is an ecclesiastical disease ; it is confusion and death— bondage by 
the operation of a violated law. This beauty and symmetry can be destroyed 
either by abuse of authority on the one hand, or by resisting rightful 
authority on the other. Either of these instantly brings discord between 
the interior and the exterior law, and discord becomes slavery — a destruction 
of the law of love, or an obedience to the law of self-ism. 

Although the exact origin of ecclesiastical government is somewhat 
shrouded in mystery, we are upon the terra firma of actual records when 
the apostles and evangelists begin to write to and about the churches. It 
must have taken much care on the part of the apostles to have kept the 
early disciples in order and due decorum, so unique was this new creation. 
We know this, that in the early times of the churches the quantity of gov- 
ernment was much more important than its quality. What was wanted was 
comprehensive general rules binding the early Christians together, making 
them do much the same things, having them to believe the same things, 
telling them what to believe and to expect of each other, and fashioning 
them alike, and keeping them so. As to government proper what the rule 
is does not matter so much. A good rule is better than a bad one, but any 
rule in the beginning is better than none ; while, for reasons which the apos- 
tles well appreciated, none was very good. But to gain that rule was incom- 
parably more important to the apostles doubtless tlian its useful elements. 
In the incipiency of any new government how to get the obedience of men 



62 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

is the hard problem ; what to do with that obedience was less troublesome 
doubtless in the eyes of the apostles. To gain that obedience, the primary 
condition was to establish a oneness of will, faith and practice — not so much 
the union, but the sameness of the faith and practice. The object of such 
organizations was to create what may be called the habit of thinking alike 
and acting alike. All the actions of those early disciples were to be sub- 
mitted to a single rule for a single object ; that gradually created that disci- 
pline which science teaches to be essential, and which the apostles saw to be 
essential too. That this early discipline, however, forbids free thought was 
not an evil ; or rather through an evil, it was the necessary basis of the 
greatest good ; it was necessary for the making of the great mould of the 
apostolic churches, and hardening the soft fibre of the early disciples. 

These churches of the living God, and their form of polity, are all insti- 
tuted in subjection to the immutable and predestined law of the gospel, 
prior to all the devices of man, and prior to all human contrivances, prior 
to all new-fangled ideas as to what a church ought to be, antecedent to our 
very existence, by which they are knit and connected with the eternal 
pattern of Christ's own moulding, out of which they cannot develop. 
Under this immutable law they are led to act, and are restrained from 
acting, and any church departing from it under any circumstances, lies 
under the grave susj^icion of being no church at all. This law must be 
studied before it can be known and understood. Reason, or the wit of 
man, does not invent this law, but only discovers it, and though it be prin- 
cipally discovered by reason, yet there is also a secondary and additional 
way which contributes no little to the manifestation of it. This is the 
harmony and joint consent of the churches, which, though there be no 
formal covenant between them, yet they all do tacitly and spontaneously 
conspire in a dutiful observation of these immutable laws of the gospel 
relating to ecclesiastical government. Wherefore, although every Baptist 
church be in itself perfect and complete, nevertheless, each of them is also 
a member of the great family of churches of the same faith and order. For 
these bodies are never so self-consistent in themselves as not to stand in need 
of mutual aid and communication, sometimes for their amelioration, but always 
for the spread of the gospel. Wherefore, they need in some manner to be 
rightly directed in this species of church inter-dependency. And although 
this may be done in a great measure by natural reason, still not sufficiently 
for all the churches ; and hence special laws have been introduced among 
them by the practice of the churches themselves. 

This form of polity was specifically planned and contrived by Christ and 
his apostles, and set up in pursuance of some regular plan and design, from 
which there can be no departure. But with all other post-apostolic sects, 
this appears to be an erroneous conception of the subject. With them no 
Buch plan was ever formed, consequently no such first principles, original 
model, or standard exist. With them the constitution of a system of church 
polity has grown out of occasion and emergency; from the fluctuating 
policy of diflerent ages; from the contentions, successes, interests, and 



OR, THE COMMON" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 53 

opportunities of different orders and factions of men in the community. 
The religious house they erect resembles one of those old mansions which, 
instead of being built all at once, after a regular plan, and according to the 
rules of architecture, has been reared in different ages without design and 
without beauty and symmetry, but has been altered from time to time, and 
has been continually receiving additions and repairs, suited to the taste, 
whims and caprices of its successive proprietors. In such a building we 
look in vain for the elegance and proportion, for the just order and corre- 
spondence of parts which we see in the divine models — the free and inde- 
pendent churches of the Bible. It was a new form of polity, able to carry 
Christianity out of bondage into Christian civilization. It holds a position 
on the great chart of human progress second to none in its influence, in its 
achievements and in its history. From this precious germ has developed 
the principal governmental institutions of the modern civilized state. Reli- 
gious freedom, a free gospel and a free church were all wrapped up in this 
form of church polity, and handed down by Christ and his apostles. 

It is not every institution that is a church. Moreover, there are many 
institutions purporting to be churches which have never been instituted ; 
they have grown, and are nothing more than developments. They have an 
unseen, yet an increasing and growing faculty, with neither law nor gospel 
to limit a still further increase of their power. For instance, the universal 
church, as we see it united for the purpose of government, was never organ- 
ized by the apostles, nor by any one else by them authorized so to do. They 
have been organized without authority of gospel law, and have grown and 
developed without law; whereas, Baptist church government is an insti- 
tuted, or enacted, institution after the exact models of the apostolic churches, 
which act and have their being under a charter, as it were, from our 
Saviour, whose institutors are the particular membership of each local 
church, organizing the same for government and the worship of God. 
Baptist church government, so closely connected with what we love and 
admire in political liberty, as well as progress and security, themselves 
ingredients of religious liberty, stands in need of stability and continuity, 
and these cannot be secured without an organic institution, such as begins 
with the very beginning of every Baptist church. Hollow, indeed, must 
be every ecclesiastical institution that is suffered to spring up without a war- 
rant of the law of the gospel, the counterpart of which is not found in the 
primitive times of the churches. They are like an empty out-house on the 
premises, and are sure to be filled with litter and rubbish, and to become 
nuisances. Among such organizations may be included the Catholic, Epis- 
copalian, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, and all other systems 
whose churches are linked together for governmental purposes, under what 
is known as the Universal Church. The system to which Baptists belong 
may be designated as the institutional system, and the others to what might 
properly be called the crescive system, or the system of growth and develop- 
ment. 

A Baptist church thus organized is emphatically an Institution. And in 



54 A TREATISE UPOK BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE ; 

order to appreciate this subject let us inquire into the nature of institutions 
in general and those of Baptist churches in particular. According to the 
highest meaning which the term has gradually acquired, especially from the 
standpoint of a Baptist church, an institution is a system or body of eccle- 
siastical jurisprudence, or Scriptural laws, customs and usages of extensive 
and recurring operation, containing within itself an organism by which it 
effects its own development. Its object is to generate, effect, regulate or sanc- 
tion a succession of acts all in conformity with the law of its organization. 
The idea of an institution implies a degree of independence and self-govern- 
ment. The law which authorizes its organization acts through human 
agents, and these are in case of Baptist churches, their officers and members. 
We are likewise in the habit of calling single laws, usages and customs in- 
stitutions, if their operation is of vital importance and vast scope, and if their 
continuance is in a high degree independent of auy interfering power. Thus 
we call the Lord's Supper and Baptism institutions in consideration of their 
pervading importance, their universal observance, their extensive operation, 
and the security which their continuance enjoys in the conviction of all 
Christians against any attempt to abolish them. It always forms a promi- 
nent element in the idea of an institution, whether the term be taken in the 
strictest sense or not, that it is a group of Scripture laws, together with 
usages and customs standing in close relation to one another, and forming 
an independent whole with a united and distinguishing character of its own. 
Christ never instituted any system of church polity that can be bettered by 
the ingenuity of man. 

By institutional Baptist church government is meant that popular sys- 
tem which we see in full and beautiful operation during the lives and labors 
of the apostles, which consists in a great organism of free and independent 
churches, instinct with self government, and is the ecclesiastical embodi- 
ment of self-reliance and mutual acknowledgment of self-rule. It is grounded, 
rooled and nurtured in and by the Scriptures. On the other hand, the uni- 
versal church system has the serious inconvenience of changing the proper 
venure, as lawyers would express it. They are like a ship at sea without 
chart or compass, without anchor or rudder, to be driven about by every 
wind and doctrine, but having originated in various ways, and at various 
periods of remote antiquity or of more recent date, they can set up no claim 
to being Scripture churches. These universal churches, so called, meet 
periodically by representatives to legislate for the churches ; what unites 
these individual officers and representatives into an institution? or how can 
the institution outlast the individual officers existing at any given period ? 
How could a Methodist Conference or a Presbyterian Synod be an institu- 
tion, when their members cease to be such after a few days' labor ? They 
are but temporary members of a temporary organization. Such is not the 
case with an instituted Baptist church. The institution itself is the organic 
law of the Scriptures which provides for the organization and the continu- 
ous and perpetual existence of the church. Its members come and go, are 
born anew and are baptized into it, but the church is a continuation, and is 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 55 

a living reality. It spreads the framework of the same system of gospel 
laws over every church of the same faith and order and similarly instituted, 
prescribing their line of action, so that it becomes a consistent continuation 
of that which their predecessors have done, or, in other words, it breathes the 
same leading principles into different aggregates and assemblies of men, and 
different generations, as the same principles produce and reproduce the same 
seasons. An instituted Baptist church thus insures stability and perpetuity 
and renders true development possible, while without it there is little more 
than subjective impulsiveness, which may be good and noble, or ruinous and 
purely passionate, but always lacks stability and continuity, and conse- 
quently true development and safe assimilating growth. A conference or a 
general assembly, convened at stated intervals, without Scripture authority 
and institution, can produce little more than a succession of instinctive ac- 
tions, according to the whims of the body assembled, because they are 
unguided, un moulded and unrestrained by permanent Scripture laws and 
usages and without a maturing organism — a divine institution. 

Further illustrating institutional church government and its superiority 
over all other systems, it is necessary to present to our minds clearly, as we 
study its history, what effects it produces on the individual and on the 
churches. This instituted self-government trains the mind and nourishes 
the character for a dependence upon the Scriptures as the only law-book of 
the churches, as well as of a law-abiding acknowledgment of its binding 
authority. It educates and builds up a membership accustomed to a reign 
of law and order, and not a rule of a priesthood. It cultivates church 
dignity in all the governed, and teaches respect for the rights of others. It 
brings home religious liberty and freedom of conscience, equality of all 
under the law of the gospel, and corresponding obligations such as no other 
system does. It is Christ's system instituted by his apostles, and is the only 
ecclesiastical self-government which is a real organic government of self, by 
self, as well as for self, and, indeed, is the only real self-government, of 
which all other governments assuming the name of self-government are but 
semblances, because they are at best the unrestrained rule of accidentally 
dominating, self-appointed priests and bishops, who use pomp and splendor, 
surpliced gowns and other insignia of a royal priesthood, as a means 
of stifling liberty of thought and action in the church. They demand 
obedience on the ground of authority. They contend that this authority 
comes from a source not within the circle of the governed. Whereas, the 
obedience of a Baptist to church authority has its very source within the 
circle of the governed. Such is the source of obedience due to authority in 
that church, the component members of which live in covenanted relations — 
in other words, in an instituted church. Baptists obey, not because the 
church government exists before the constituent members and makes them, 
but because Christ has given them authority to institute the church, and 
because they must have a government and laws to regulate it. 

Such remarkable institutions as these churches of the living God would 
not be expected to spring into existence complete, or to grow out of nothing, 



56 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

that is, without a foundation previously formed by a supernatural power. 
Their birth must be sought in the mind and purpose of God before the 
foundation of the world, and their maturity would be expected long after 
their origination. The creation of these wonderful churches was a necessity 
lying at the very threshold of Christianity. Under the old Jewish dispensa- 
tion religious institutions were breaking down. Under the new order 
of things, doubtless, disorders existed, both from the conflict of authority 
and from the abuse of powers not as yet well understood and defined. A 
new creation had sprung up. Instead of the concentration of ecclesiastical 
powers into one organic whole, they were scattered and lodged in inde- 
pendent local sovereign churches. A wider distribution of the powers of 
church government, a clearer definition of them, and a stricter account- 
ability of the ofiicers of the churches were needed for the welfare, as well 
as the safety of the churches. It was under the immediate eyes of the 
apostles, and through the experimental knowledge gained under them, that 
the idea of ecclesiastical polity, or a church, was gradually formed in the 
religious mind. Their growth was a development running through centuries 
of time, from the first appearance of a necessity for a change in the plan 
of God's government on earth, before the entire result was realized. The 
union of baptized believers into an organic local church is later in time 
than the Jewish system, and prior in time to the Catholic system— neither 
of which bears &uj resemblance to Christ's conception of a church. His 
w^as a higher organic process, and enjoys the distinction of having divinity 
stamped upon it. 

The principles of apostolic church government would have been settled 
in every minutia by writing, had they not pre-existed in their original state, 
which is the oral and unwritten, nor if Christianity had never been 
attacked, there never would have been, perhaps, any writings by the evan- 
gelists to settle the doctrines promulgated by Christ. Had there been no 
heresies about circumcision, the council never would have assembled at 
Antioch to settle that vexed question. After these greatest of all men had, 
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, written in defence of these truths, 
the work was finished. So-called ecclesiastical bodies have, since those days 
without authority, and rash through weakness, attempted to improve that 
code of laws, which Baptists conceive to be the greatest acts of folly and 
foolishness which have ever been committed in the world. They have raised 
these trashy ramparts around the truth In their own eyes they think they 
protect her, but, at the same time, they conceal her. From the standpoint 
of their own litfe^e sect they have rendered her unassailable, but by that 
means less accessible. What the truth wants and needs is to be left in the 
open field, where she can embrace the whole world, and the whole world 
can embrace her, without stumbling over man-made creeds in order to get 
to her embraces. That people who undertake to coin books of doctrine 
and discipline, and who fancy that, because they have written them, they 
are able to give them adequate evidence and stability, whoever they may 
be, do a great injury to the cause of truth, for they have proved thereby 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 57 

that they are ignorant of the true nature of that jurisprudence which under- 
lies the polity of Christ's churches. God never revealed anything in writing 
to the elect of the Old Testament before Moses' time, but spoke to them 
directly. Christ wrote not anything that is now extant in the world. The 
precepts and teachings which he left were written only in the hearts of those 
who heard him, by grace, as they are written with ink in our books. 
Instead of books, He promised to them the Holy Spirit. It is He wJio shall 
teach you what to speak. It is said that Lycurgus would never reduce his 
laws to writing, for he thought the most material points, and such as most 
directly tended to the public welfare, by being imprinted on the hearts of 
their youth, by good education and by constant and habitual observance of 
them, becoming a second nature, would supply the place of the law and a 
lawgiver to them the rest of their lives. 

Every imperfect and false institution, whether secular or divine, writes 
much, because it feels its weakness, and thereby seeks support. Hence, fol- 
lows the unalterable consequence, that no ecclesiastical institution, truly 
divine, could be founded on written law, since those who found it know not 
what it will become, and since insensible growth is a true sign of durability 
in every possible order of things. Any kind of a church whatever, adult, 
and of full growth at birth, is the greatest of absurdities, a logical contra- 
diction. The ingenuity of man is altogether too frail to perceive and ferret 
out the true jurisdiction of ecclesiastical government. One of its follies is 
that of believing that an assembly of men can constitute a church by for- 
mulating a code of law^s for its government ; that a constitution, the collec- 
tion of the fundamental laws which are suited for a church, and which give 
to it some definite form of government, is a performance which requires 
intelligence, knowledge and practice, as if a man may learn his trade by 
constituting ; as if men, met together for the first time to organize a new 
church, can say to one man, or to a few, make us a government, as one would 
say to a mechanic, make me a machine, leaving it to his fancy what kind of 
a thing he should make. They forget that no ecclesiastical government, 
purporting to be of divine origin, results from deliberation and design, but 
that it was planted by Christ himself, and has been constantly developing 
ever since, under the influence of the Holy Spirit. In the very nature of 
things, it is absolutely necessary that the origin of the true church should 
manifest itself from beyond the sphere of human power, so that man, who 
may appear to have a direct hand in it, may be, nevertheless, only the cir- 
cumstance and the instrument in the hands of God. He cannot create a 
church by formulas of written words. The collection of the fundamental 
laws, which must essentially constitute a true church of Christ, never has 
been written, and never will be. It is only when a body of baptized 
believers find themselves already constituted, without being able hardly to 
say how, for it is the love of God that inclines them to it, that it is possible 
to make known, or explain, the special features of that union ; but even 
then, in almost every case, the attempt to explain true Baptist church juris- 
prudence is the cause and efiTect of very great evil, and sometimes is mis- 



68 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

leading and injurious. Not only does it not belong to man to create a 
church, but it does not appear that his power, without divine authority, 
extends even to change for the better a church already divinely established. 
There is nothing good, that evil does not seek to sully, or alter ; there is no 
evil that goodness does not repress and attack, by making it better and 
more perfect. It is impossible to alter divine things for the better, and it is 
certain that nothing real can be changed for the better, especially in a 
matter of so great importance as that of church government, without the 
help of God. Hence, that instinctive aversion among Baptists to innovations. 

Cicero, in his treatise upon the Commonwealth and Laws, had a most 
sublime conception of those innate principles which underlie tiie substratum 
of all law and government, and are peculiarly applicable here. He says : 
" There is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which 
establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of 
all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether 
written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked. This, then, as it 
appears to me, has been the decision of the wisest philosophers — that law 
was neither a thing contrived by the genius of man, nor established by any 
decree of the people, but a certain eternal principle, which governs the 
entire universe, wisely commanding what is right and prohibiting what is 
wrong. Therefore they call that aboriginal and supreme law the m{7id of 
God, enjoining or forbidding each separate thing in accordance with enlight- 
ened reason. True law is right reason conformably to nature, universal, 
unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge to duty, and whose prohibi- 
tions restrain us from evil. Whether it enjoins, or forbids, the good accept 
its injunctions, and the wicked treat them with indifference. This law can- 
not be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation 
or abrogation. ISTeither the senate nor the people can give any dispensation 
for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other interpreter 
and expositor than our own conscience. It is not one thing at Rome, and 
another at Athens, one thing to-day and another to-morrow; but at all 
times and in all nations, this universal law must forever reign eternal and 
imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all things. God 
himself is its author, its formulator, its enforcer. And he who does not 
obey it flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man. 
And by so doing he will endure the severest penalties even if he avoid the 
other evils which are usually accounted punishments." 

How true are these sublime words, and how applicable to that peculiar 
kind of law that underlies Baptist church government and jurisprudence I 
Akin to these ideas are those of Paul, when he says : The Gentiles show 
the work of the law written in their hearts, their consciences also bearing 
witness, and their thoughts the meamuhile accusing, or else excusing one 
another. The earliest rudimentary principles concerning apostolic church 
government, now so fully developed, are those contained in the sentiment 
that the Works of the law were written in their hearts, which was discover- 
able by enlightened reason under the guidance of the apostles and after 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OP THE GOSPEL. 59 

them the Holy Spirit. Besides it is said : Thy law is in my heart. I will 
put my law in their mind. I will put my law in their inward parts, and write 
it in their hearts. Doth not even nature itself teach you^ Do ye not know 
that the saints shall judge the world, and if the world shall be judged by you, 
are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters f For when the Gentiles, which 
have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having 
not the law, are a law unto themselves, which show the work of the law written 
in their hearts. Now the only churches extant in the world that have 
generated and developed this kind of law are those of the Baptist denomi- 
nation. These churches are of ancient as well as of divine origin, and may 
be referred to the earliest collection of disciples of Christ into an organic 
unit for the purpose of the propagation of the gospel, and for the object of 
church government may be regarded as a temporal as well as a spiritual 
body, having an understanding and will peculiar to themselves, and are 
susceptible of obligations and duties, which can act and be seen only in the 
acts of those who compose the body. 

Though men differ in their opinions about its nature and constitution, yet 
in this all agree ; that Christ while on earth established a church after a 
certain model, having a certain specific form of government, and not two 
different ones, absolutely incompatible and diametrically antagonistic the 
one to the other in polity as well as in doctrinal tenets. In this the Papal 
agrees with the Episcopal, the Presbyterian with the Baptist, the wise with 
the unwise. But the foundations and sources from which powers ecclesiasti- 
cal are drawn are questions upon which there is a wide difference of opinion. 

In order to get a proper conception of the framework of these churches it 
would seem antecedently that we ought to commence with the simplest eccle- 
siastical principles in the early churches, as near as possible to their rudi- 
mental condition. In other words, if we would follow the course usual in 
such inquiries, we would penetrate as far as possible into the history and 
nature of the primitive churches. Since there is nothing more necessary in 
treating a subject than to possess the first principles of it, and that every 
subject should begin with establishing its own principles, and setting them 
forth in such a light as may best discover their truth and certainty, that 
they may serve for a foundation for all the particulars which are to depend 
upon them. 

In giving the individual and internal condition of Baptist churches at any 
given period, we must have an accurate idea of the highest point of develop- 
ment to which they have yet attained, as well as the lowest from which they 
sprung. But this presupposes a general acquaintance with the theory of 
this peculiar kind of government, as well as a knowledge of the practical 
workings of the same at this the day of their full development. If it be true, 
as is contended by many able writers, that the history of the constitution 
and laws of a country is, in many respects, a complete history of the coun- 
try itself, it can then be no longer disputed that the church historian who 
neglects to examine the rise and progress of the framework and jurispru- 
dence of the churches whose history he is recounting, neglects one of the 



60 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

most important and accurate sources of information, without the aid of 
which he must fail in his attempt of faithfully transmitting history. 

If then a knowledge of the history of the laws of a country be of such im- 
portance to the professed historian, its relative importance is still greater to 
every member of a church, who is but a quasi-judge, and, as such, is often 
called to pass upon, and to administer, the intricate affairs of church gov- 
ernment, and to vindicate the rights of his church, and often the character 
of his brethren, in the administration of their disciplinary affairs. Nothing 
ought to be better known by those who profess Christianity than the first 
principles of those ecclesiastical laws which regulate both the conduct of 
every one in particular, and the order of the churches in general which they 
compose together. Notwithstanding, we see that many of the most learned 
of those not of our communion seem to be ignorant of what the Scriptures 
teach us concerning true church polity, who know so little of these princi- 
ples that they have established rules which violate and destroy them. 

To stop to inquire into the causes of this strange contrariety of opinion in 
men would be a needless consumption of time. It is only necessary to say 
that the first elements of ecclesiastical government when properly under- 
stood explain this difference of opinion ; and what the Scriptures teach us 
concerning Christ's churches discovers to us the causes of this blindness, and 
informs us, at the same time what are the first principles which Christ has 
established as the foundations of the order of his churches, and the sources 
of all the laws for their government. 

"What, then, is ecclesiastical power ? what are its sources ? and in whom 
does it reside ? By what authority doest thou these things f and who gavest 
thee this authority ^ This was a very pertinent question asked our Saviour. In 
order, therefore, to know where this power resides, and from whence it springs, 
it is necessary to know what is the design and pattern of Christ's churches, 
and to know this is only to know why they are made. And we know why 
a thing is made, if, by observing how it is made, we discover what its 
structure may have relation to. Because it is certain that Christ has pro- 
portioned the nature of his churches to the end for which he has designed 
them. Of one thing we are certain : that in all believers in our Lord Jesus 
Christ — the materials of which his churches are composed — they have souls 
which animate their bodies, and that in these redeemed souls there are two 
powers and faculties ; that is, understandings which are capable of knowing, 
and wills capable of loving. Thus we see that it is to know and to love, 
that God has made man, and sent his Son into the world to redeem him, 
and, consequently, that it is to unite his loving subjects into some organic 
unit, a church, for his worship and the spread of his Son's gospel, and in the 
knowledge and love of which his peace and quiet consist ; and it is towards 
this object and end the lovers of Christ ought to direct all their steps. From 
which it follows, that the first law of Christ's disciples is their destination to 
the knowledge and love of his church, which ought to be their end, and in 
which they are to find their happiness ; and that it is this law, which, being 
the rule of all their actions, ought to be the principle of all their desires. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 61 

There is no principle in the disciples of Christ so dominant as the dispo- 
sition to unite one with another for mutual worship and edification. For in 
themselves they will be so far from finding their happiness outside of this 
union that they will see nothing there but the seeds of discontent and unrest. 
For all that is attainable or enjoyable in religion outside of the church of 
Christ is only a temporary provision made of things necessary for all our 
selfish wants, which will perish when they cease, as being unworthy of our 
minds and hearts. We must learn from Christ who has redeemed his people 
that it is he alone who is able to fill the vacuum in that mind and in that 
heart which he has redeemed for himself. 

Although the disciples of Christ were imbued with a natural desire for 
that union for which they were so fitted, yet while on earth Christ did not 
organize his churches and put them immediately in possession of them, but 
under the direction and preaching of his apostles they set about the consti- 
tution of those ecclesiastical judicatories on earth which were to receive the 
gospel and to hand it down to future generations. Now, in every organic 
union, whether divine or profane, there must be a oneness of will, faith and 
practice, and in order to produce this unity the wills of many must concur 
to one and the same act and effect. This oneness of will is called consent, 
by which we must not understand one will of many men, as Pedo-Baptists 
have it in the erection of their ecclesiastical power, but many wills to the 
producing of one effect. There is involved in this consent the idea of a 
church covenant wherein it is agreed what shall be believed and practiced by 
and between the members thus entering the organization. 

Hence an apostolic church is said to be constituted when every one desir- 
ing to enter the organization have agreed upon a covenant, and all being 
of a oneness of faith, do further agree among themselves, that whatever may 
be lawfully done by the whole number, every individual, as well he who 
assented to it as he that voted against it, shall be considered as having 
authorized all the actions of the majority of them, in the same manner as 
if they w^ere his own, to the end that they may live harmoniously together 
in a manner consonant to their spiritual natures, and conformable to the 
laws of their common Saviour as revealed in the Scriptures. Before this 
expressed agreement that the majority shall rule, or that the sovereign 
ecclesiastical power shall reside in the majority, the members are many, and 
as yet not one in the sense of a oneness of will and faith ; nor can any action 
taken in a disorganized concourse of believers met together be attributed to 
the whole number, or can it be truly said to be the action of the whole 
number, unless every one present, not so much as one excepted, have con- 
curred therein. In such a disorganized concourse of people, whenever it is 
said that they have agreed to anything, it is to be understood that every 
particular individual in the whole number has consented thereto, and not 
the majority only. Hence w^e see that the principle of the majority rule is 
entirely foreign to the original institution of a Baptist church. It only 
begins to play a part, after it is S3t in motion. It is an instrument, and a 
very important one, in the administration of the government, but not in 



62 

laying its foundation. This unity is formed not by the act of the majority 
of the members, but by the members unanimously ; for the consent of each 
would be necessary to make the act of the majority binding. The united 
and unanimous wills of individuals make the covenant, and the vote and 
unanimous consent of each must be taken. If there should be a dissenting 
voice such an one cannot be of the organization, but remains without the 
pale of the church, and the right to deny to such an one church privileges 
could not be disputed, and no church could think of coercing him into an 
adherence to it. By this they consent and covenant, one with another, that 
the will, or vote of the majority of them, shall involve and be taken for the 
will or vote of every member of the church, thereby reducing their wills to 
a majority of voices, into one will, otherwise no powers ecclesiastical could 
be exercised and nothing ordered without the presence and consent of every 
member, not so much as one excepted. 

When there is no such covenants agreed upon, and no such body erected 
having vested in it the authority to accomplish this end, it is to be under- 
stood that there is no church at all established. For covenants agreed upon 
by every believer assembled for the purpose of constituting a church, and 
even put in writing, without at the same time erecting a power to enforce an 
observance of them, are not to be called covenants, but every one is yet in a 
state of disunion, and must needs dissolve by the difference of their interests 
and opinions. If the majority of the whole number thus entering the 
organization be taken to include the will of every member, and they be 
agreed as to the true faith of the gospel, then they can be said to be a 
church of Christ, having lawful authority to exercise ecclesiastical powers, 
wherein the whole number, or so many of them as please, being assembled 
together, are a church, and each particular individual thus entering the 
covenant a member thereof. 

Thus we see that in this way ecclesiastical powers are generated and 
Baptist churches set up in the world. It is more than consent — it is real 
unity, and from this institution of a church are derived all the rights and 
privileges of those who undertake to keep house for the Lord. The use of 
this unity is the natural consequence of the order of all ecclesiastical gov- 
ernment, and of the ties which our Saviour forms among men, thus blend- 
ing the human and the divine. They are assemblies of many persons 
united into one body — that is, formed after the strict examples of the New 
Testament churches, without which they would be extra ecclesiastical bodies. 

One of the principal characteristic prerogatives of every apostolic church 
is that all ecclesiastical power on earth is lodged in the local church. The 
purpose for which a number of men unite in the organization of a church is 
to act in concert, and to do so it is necessary that there should be erected 
somewhere a sovereign authority to order and direct what is to be done by 
each member in relation to the end of the organization. By the very act of the 
organization each member, by his covenant, subjects himself to the authority 
of the entire body in everything that may be lawfully done. This sovereign 
authority of all, over each member, therefore, essentially belongs to the 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 63 

church. But as the exercise of sovereign authority by the "whole church, 
not SO much as one excepted, having a right to a voice, would be incon- 
venient and often impossible ; besides, there might be some dissenting 
opinions as to the propriety of the matter proposed ; it is therefore absolutely 
necessary that the sovereign authority of the church be placed in a less 
number than the whole, according as it was first ordained in the apostolic 
churches, the models of which we find in the Scriptures. 

If it were left undecided as to where this supreme authority was lodged 
by the founders of the churches, we might place it in any number of men 
less than the majority. But there is scarcely any feature of apostolic church 
polity so plainly set forth in the Scriptures as that the ruling or sovereign 
power was conferred upon the majority of the church. It is one of the fun- 
damental principles of apostolic church jurisprudence that the opinion of 
the majority must pass without dispute, in all matters lawful to be done, for 
that of the whole church. This is the rule of rules, and without it church 
government is destroyed. While the majority is not the whole church, yet 
for all purposes of practice and discipline it is the church. Christ has no 
other or better way of making clear and stable that which is doubtful and 
unsettled. It is the only standard of right, not an infallible one every time, 
but nevertheless the only one given. 

In all cases where the act of the majority of a church is valid, it is 
highly desirable that the decision, when come to, should be considered as 
the act of the entire body ; that the com.parative numbers of the majority 
and minority should not be adverted to as a ground for impugning the 
decision ; and that the act of the church should be obeyed without any 
question of its validity, on the ground of the smallness of the majority by 
which it may have been carried. Decision by a majority is a mode of cutting 
a knot which cannot be untied ; it is, therefore, on every account expedient 
that the knot should be cut effectually. For a similar reason, it is fitting 
that any minority who may be unable to induce the majority to adopt their 
propositions, should acquiesce in its decisions, and should continue to attend 
its meetings, without seceding or withdrawing, on the ground that their 
advice is disregarded. In every church there is a minority which is unable 
to carry its views; and if such minorities were to be discouraged by the 
rejection of their motions, and to withdraw from their duties, the ultimate 
success of their opinions could never take place, at least not in consequence 
of their exertions. Unless a defeated minority is willing to act upon this 
principle, the unity of the body is weakened and impaired and a disruption 
is sure to take place, similar to that which took place in the denomination 
many years ago when our anti-missionary brethren separated themselves 
from the rest of the churches, and set up a people of their own. Unanimity, 
in a body which may consist of many hundreds, is plainly impossible; 
decision by the majority is therefore necessary. It is likewise necessary that, 
when the decision has once been made, no steps should be taken for weaken- 
ing its effects, and that it be considered as the decision of the whole, and not 
merely a part of the church. 



64 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJECH JUEISPRTJDENCE ; 

If the government of the churches be kept in the hands of the member- 
ship it is Baptistic, or, more properly speaking, Apostolical ; if it had been 
intrusted to a certain select number of men it would have been an episcopacy 
or a presbytery ; and if confided to a single man it would have become a 
papacy. We shall not stop to examine which of these three forms of 
church government is the best. If we were called upon to select a secular 
form of government we would feel at liberty to make a choice, and then 
go about persuading men that it was the best. But it is sufficient for us to 
inquire which form was established by the apostles, and then keep that 
model ever before our eyes. Every local church that governs itself without 
dependence upon another power is a sovereign church, the rights of which 
are naturally the same as those of every other church of the same model, of 
the same faith and order, governing itself by its own authority under the 
laws of the gospel of Christ. This sovereign authority is the life of the 
church, w^hich being departed from the body, the members no more receive 
their motion from it, and whatever else it is it certainly ceases to be a church 
of Christ. 

Besides it can be demonstrated that the form of government that underlies 
the apostolic churches is the first and only kind of government by institu- 
tion that can be generated among a multitude of free people. It i>3 the first 
in order of time, and must be so of necessity. Even those who adhere to 
the Episcopal, the Presbyterian and the papal form of government require 
that there shall be an agreement as to who should govern them, whether it 
be one man or a select number less than a majority, which agreement in a 
multitude of men, must consist in the consent of the majority of them, 
otherwise there can be nothing agreed upon ; and where the votes, or wills, 
of the majority include the votes of the minority there is primarily such 
agreement as we have described as being at the basis of apostolic church 
polity. In organizing a Scriptural church there can be no covenant or 
agreement between the sovereign church as a whole and the individual 
member. For while the church is being instituted, and the covenants are 
being agreed upon, there is no sovereign church yet in existence with which 
to covenant. It would not be reasonable to say that a disorganized multi- 
tude, met together to organize a church, should contract with itself, or with 
any one man, or number of men, parts and parcels of itself, to make itself 
sovereign ; nor that any number, great or small, considered as one aggregate 
whole can give itself anything which before it had not. And yet this is 
exactly what our Episcopal, Presbyterian and papal friends did when they 
first met together to form their ecclesiastical polities. 

The sovereign ecclesiastical power in an apostolic church is not composed 
by the covenant of any multitude with individual members. To say that 
this can be done would be to suppose that the organization has already taken 
place ; whereas, in fact, the same is conferred by the individual covenants 
of every separate man with the other. That is to say, every man entering 
the organization must for himself enter into this agreement with every other 
separate man to stand to and obey whatsoever the majority shall lawfully 



OR, THE COMMOX LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 65 

command ; so that it be done with the consent of every one of the church 
in particular. For it is the unity of the majority, and not the unity of the 
whole church, that makes the church one for the purpose of government. 
Hence it is plain to see that there passes no power or special privileges from 
the many or majority to any private man, whether he be a minister or other- 
wise, to govern the church. 

The question as to who is the better man, or the one who has the most 
rights or privileges, has no place in the New Testament system of church 
government, where all men are equal. The inequality that we see practiced 
in some systems of church polity has been introduced at a later date than 
the apostles' times, and was never introduced by the consent of men, but by 
an usurpation, and is not only against reason, but contrary to Scripture. 
For there are very few so foolish as that they had not rather govern them- 
selves, than to be governed by others. If that liberty wherewith Christ has 
made us free, has also made us equal, that equality is to be acknowledged 
in church government as well as in nature. And that by the entrance into 
the conditions of a church government, no man can reserve to himself, or 
assume, any right or privilege, which he is not willing should be reserved 
to, and enjoyed by, every one of the rest of the church. And any system 
of government, whether divine or secular, that will allow any man, or set 
of men, to require for themselves, that which they would not have granted 
to others, they do contrary to both the letter and spirit of the free gospel of 
Christ, that everywhere commands the acknowledgment of the natural 
freedom and equality of all men. The observers of this great law are those 
we call meek and lowly in spirit, and are modest ; and the breakers of it, 
haughty and proud, and are arrogant. 

Now the difference between the apostolic form of church government and 
that of an episcopacy or a papacy is that the latter do not consider that all 
ecclesiastical power resides in the local church, but that the church proper 
consists in the whole universal body of Christians of their own faith and 
order ; that the power to govern may be placed in one man, or a few par- 
ticular men; that in such a great multitude, in which every man is included, 
there are no means or ways to deliberate or to give counsel what to do with- 
out great inconvenience. In such an unwieldly body politic (for it is noth- 
ing more or less) having, as they consider, no Scriptural barriers in the 
way, they feel at liberty to cast about for a man, or set of men, that may 
be agreed upon to govern the whole ; and in this way may put the names of 
such man, or set of men, before the whole Christian world to be voted upon, 
and by plurality of votes to transfer that supreme power, which they them- 
selves never had, to the number of men so named and chosen to govern. 

This plan of church government is visionary, irrational, illogical and 
clearly unscriptural. Because there never has been a time since the first 
church was instituted at Jerusalem, when the whole body of Christian men 
and women ever met together in one assembly and organized a church upon 
such a basis. And certainly the first apostolic church never ordered that 
any such ecclesiastical power should be erected. And if there never has 
6 



66 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

been such an assembly met together for such a purpose, any system gotten 
up upon that plan is but an usurpation and therefore unscriptural. For 
church government is no less rational than any other form of government 
and polity. As to the pretense that Christ gave any one man, or any priv- 
ileged class of men, a divine right to rule over his people will be considered 
further on in its proper place. 

There is no doubt but that the apostles being in absolute liberty might, if 
they pleased, have so organized the churches as to have vested the ruling 
authority in the pastor, or any other number of men less than the majority, 
to represent the whole church, and have subjected the churches as abso- 
lutely to them as to any other representative. But even then elective pas- 
tors could not be sovereign, but only ministers of the sovereign churches. 
For where the sovereign power has already been lodged in the ruling major- 
ity, there can be no other sovereignty established. That would be to erect 
two sovereigns, which would be to have the churches represented by two 
actors, that by opposing one another must of necessity divide that power 
that is indivisible, which is contrary to all instituted sovereignty. The 
church cannot forfeit its sovereignty and cannot without express Scriptural 
authority and precedent transfer it to another. 

Though every Baptist church is sovereign, yet it must not be' considered 
that its power is absolute and has no limit. There are many things which it 
may and must do, and no unlawful thing which it can do if it strikes at the 
life of the apostolic churches ; for the bounds of that power which regulates 
its action is marked by the Scriptures, beyond which it is unlawful to go. 
Whatever the church shall decree, not warranted by the Scriptures, is the 
act only of every member by whose vote the decree was made, but not the 
act of any member that being present voted against it, nor of any member 
absent. It is manifest from this that it is sometimes not only lawful, but 
expedient, for members to make open protestation against the ruling major- 
ity, and cause their dissent to be registered, to the end that they may pre- 
serve themselves as Baptists, and set themselves right in the sight of God, 
and thereby do nothing in contempt of the sovereign authority, nor in vio- 
lation of their covenant relations. But on the contrarj^, in all rulings in mat- 
ters not involving fundamental principles, whether he be present or absent 
he that dissents must consent with the rest. 

It may therefore be safely concluded that inasmuch as this ecclesiastical 
institution has been established for the spread and perpetuity of the gospel, 
and with an intent that it should last always, it is forbidden to change its 
form of government, and no church can do any act which tends in its na- 
ture to undermine and overthrow these fundamental principles, and any act 
tending thereto is utterly void. In human governments the laws are to be 
favorably interpreted and liberally construed in as large an extent as the 
nature of the case, joined with equity, will admit, provided they are not ex- 
tended in such a manner as to cause prejudice or injury to others; but the 
laws which relate to the fundamental principles of church government, such 
as those that concern the sovereignty, independence and equality of the 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 67 

churches, and those which relate to doctrine and discipline are to be inter- 
preted strictly, and not extended, beyond what is clearly expressed in tlie 
law, to any consequences to which the laws do not extend. 

It is quite needless to say that upon the establishment of the first church 
at Jerusalem is the earliest period at which we take up the history of church 
jurisprudence. For the history of the way this church was instituted is but 
the history of how all Baptist churches are formed. Of course at the pres- 
ent time the formality of planting a church is somewhat different only in 
details; but the fundamental principles are the same. The institution of a 
church of Christ could not then, as it cannot now, be effected but through 
the medium of a covenant or agreement by and between the members desir- 
ing to enter the organization. As it could only be done by the means of a 
covenant, the knowledge of what covenants it is necessary to make depends 
upon the knowledge of Christ's designs and purposes in the institution of 
the church. 

There are two principal laws controlling and underlying the every im- 
pulse of God's people — love to God and love to man. These two laws, 
which command men to search after and to love both God and man, implies 
a third law, which obliges them to unity among themselves and to fellow- 
ship ; because, being destined to be united into a church of Christ, which is 
to make their common happiness, and to be united in a bond of union, it is 
meet and proper that they be of one mind ; they cannot be worthy of that 
union in the possession of their common end if they do not begin their union 
by linking themselves together by the ties of mutual love and fellov/ship. 

It is in order to unite his people into a cliurch that Christ has made it 
essential to their natures, and as we see in their natures this disposition, we 
shall discover in this union the foundation of the particular rules of all their 
duties, and the foundation of all the laws governing the churches. In order, 
therefore, to judge of the true spirit and use of the laws which cement Bap- 
tist churches in the condition in which we find them at present, it is neces- 
sary to draw a plan of this species of church government on the foundation 
of the law of love, to the intent that we may see what method Christ has 
taken to make the churches subsist, and to note the stability and certainty 
of the principles of apostolic church government. 

Now the Scriptures nowhere prescribe any formal covenant into which 
those desiring to unite into a church shall enter ; and until this day there is 
no uniformity, either as to the use of written covenants, or as to their 
phrasing, and they are in no sense authoritative. They may at any time be 
modified or written ones discarded altogether; but this we do know, that in 
union and concert of action there is strength, and that every Christian neces- 
sarily stands in need of the intercourse and assistance of his bretliren, 
whether for his immediate benefit, or for perfecting the spiritual growth in 
grace of others, even though there be no external force or law by the letter 
of which they may be actually tied together. 

The first thing necessary to do in the institution of a church is for those 
desiring to enter the organization to ascertain what they may undertake to 



68 

do, and more especially wliat they must refrain from doing. The first 
churches doubtless followed the instructions and advice of the apostles and 
evangelists ; but they followed them as freemen, for it must be understood 
that a church covenant is founded on the free consent and union of minds 
in regard to that which is to be done in the organization of a church. It is 
of the very essence of every covenant that the members to be bound thereby 
consent to whatever is stipulated therein ; for otherwise no obligation, nor 
reciprocal rights or duties can be created between them. Consent obviously 
implies acquiescence of the mind in something proposed, or afiirmed. The 
term involves, in contemplation of ecclesiastical law, the existence of a moral 
power of assenting, as well as a deliberate and free exercise of such power. 
This covenant founded upon the voluntary consent of the parties can be 
nothing else but entering into an agreement, either express or implied, to obey 
the laws of Christ's kingdom according to the word of God revealed in the 
Scriptures. 

In all undertakings between man and man, as likewise between God and 
man, where there is a irust, the promise of him that is trusted, is called a 
covenant. This word sometimes signifies in the Scriptures, an agreement 
which is mutual. By and through the medium of covenants God has ever 
manifested himself to his people, and thereby acquired authority and reign 
over them. Thus was Adam reigned over, and after this it pleased God to 
speak to Abraham and to make a solemn covenant with him. Gen. 27: 8, 9. 
In this covenant Abraham in substance promised for himself, and his 
posterity to serve and obey God. And God on his part promised to Abra- 
ham the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. This same covenant 
was renewed at the foot of Mount Sinai by and between God and Moses. 
Exod. 19 : 5. Thus acquiring a double authority over them, for they were 
already his by reason of his power, and now they became the peculiar and 
special. people of the Lord by their covenant and consent. 

This same conception of a covenant, or mutual promise, enters into the 
idea of the constitution of a Baptist church. God no longer having, as in 
olden times, a representative on earth, as in Abraham and Moses, who had 
authority to consent for themselves and their people, each individual Chris- 
tian, when brought to a saving knowledge of the truth as it is in our blessed 
Lord, enters into this covenant relation for himself; that is to say, he is 
willing to subject himself to the will and authority of Christ upon his entry 
into the church. They are engagements made by mutual consent of mem- 
bers who thus make a law among themselves to perform what they promise 
to one another. Whenever this is efiected, whatever has been agreed upon 
stands in the place of laws to those who made them, which, being express 
covenants, are fundamental in their nature and cannot be abrogated. They 
are binding as to what is expressed in them, but likewise to everything 
legitimately growing out of them. 

The word covenant in the Scriptures is often used to signify law. In 
Deut. 4 : 13, the Ten Commandments are expressly called God's covenant. 
And he declared to you his covenant to perform, even the ten commandments. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 69 

a7id he wrote them upon two tables of stone. The ark, because it contained 
these two tables of the law, was called, the ark of the covenant. The word 
lawy it is true, is sometimes used in a larger sense, as intending to include the 
whole of the Pentateuch and the covenants wrought into the dispensation of 
Moses. But we see from its frequent use in the Scriptures that the word 
covenant is used to signify the law in its strictest and broadest sense as a rule 
of obedience. 

The subject matter of church covenants is the laws of Christ, as revealed 
in the Scriptures, as also the infinite diversity of matters by which mem- 
bers regulate among themselves the intercourse among themselves according 
to the Scriptures which is the basis thereof. In all these covenants the 
undertaking of one of the parties being the foundation of the engagement 
of the other, the first effect is that every one who has entered the church 
may oblige the other to execute his part according as the other is obliged by 
the covenant. It is by this mutual undertaking that Christ engages mem- 
bers to do all the duties incumbent upon them, and that he has put into each 
engagement the foundation of the laws which depend upon it. They mean 
more than we at first are wont to suppose, for in them is the commencement 
of all the ecclesiastical power on earth. 

This organic union, under a covenant, into a regularly constituted church, 
was required not merely to determine the details for which the Scriptures 
give a clear guidance, but also to supply the governmental force necessary 
for practically securing among imperfect men the observance of the most 
necessary rules of mutual behavior. The rules, by which this primitive 
church was thus required to conduct itself, was found in the moral precepts 
of the Scriptures. They need not be formally agreed upon, or reduced to 
writing, or even promulgated. Whenever this collective body of men 
organized into a church, that fact alone brought into existence certain 
unwritten laws by which they must live, and establishes the authority ot 
those laws, and subjects all members to their dominion. These rules of 
conduct, which are coeval with the founding of the church of Christ, are 
composed of the principles of common sense and reason, which have never 
been superseded by any law, whether biblical or otherwise, which are left in 
the midst of every Scripture rule, and are in general those fundamental 
precepts which are necessarily presupposed by every kind of law and polity, 
whether secular or divine. 

Baptist church covenants do not pretend to go into the details of church 
government, neither do the Scriptures. The great body of the law was left 
to be supplied by usage and custom, wrought out by those charged with the 
duty of putting this church in motion. Such a church has her own affairs 
and interests; she deliberates and takes resolutions in common, thus becom- 
ing a moral person, who possesses an understanding and will peculiar to 
herself, and is susceptible of obligations and rights. Indeed, when a church 
assumes ecclesiastical functions, they invest themselves with an understand- 
ing and will, so far as relates to the administration of church affairs and the 
exercise of authority. The church thus becomes the depository of obliga- 



70 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

tioDs and duties, and becomes bound by its covenant to hunt for such laws 
as will clothe it with an intelligent individuality. 

This express covenant obliges all consenting thereto to observe the laws 
and teachings of the Scriptures, and hence, by covenant, the Scriptures 
become the law of both faith and practice of the churches. If a man, there- 
fore, should ask a Baptist church in the administration of ecclesiastical 
affairs, as was asked our Saviour, By what authority doest thou these things, 
and who gave thee this authority f the church can make no other true 
answer, but that they do it by the authority of the institution of the church, 
under a covenant to obey the law given them by Christ. 

The precepts of the Scriptures, before the institution of a church, are not, 
properly speaking, ecclesiastical canons or rules, but wholesome admonitions, 
sufficient to point out the way, even to the salvation of the soul, if properly 
observed ; but not until a church is actually instituted, are they actually eccle- 
siastical laws, and not before. It is not denied but that there is a signifi- 
cance and binding authority in the Holy Scriptures, and that they have a 
power to bind the conscience of every Christian in themselves ; but they do 
not become the laws of the church except where an assembly of believers 
link themselves together and covenant to make them the canonical rules of 
their conduct, for certainly a disorganized multitude of Christians have no 
authority to command an observance of them, and to punish, by proper 
penalties, breaches of these rules. And in its proper place we will be able 
to show that it is in the same manner that articles of faith are agreed upon — 
that is, by covenant they are made such. 

Those fundamental principles that underlie the constitution of every 
Baptist church that determines the manner in which ecclesiastical authority 
is to be executed, is what forms church polity. These first principles are 
nothing more than the establishment of the order in which a church pro- 
poses to labor in common for obtaining those advantages with a view to 
which the church was established by Christ. 

Although in this treatise I speak of ecclesiastical government as one by 
covenant or agreement, yet Baptists do not hold, and I do not here advocate, 
the doctrine that a church, together with the right to govern it, originates in 
a voluntary covenant between the members of a church alone. They have 
never held that church government has only a conventional origin or 
authority. They have simply meant, by the covenant compact, the mutual 
relations and reciprocal rights and duties of the memberships, as implied in 
the very existence and nature of a church of Christ. Where there are 
rights and duties on each side, the subject is treated, not as a covenant vol- 
untarily entered into, and which creates them, but as a covenant which 
binds alike all the members ; and in determining whether any has broken 
the terms of the agreement. They engage themselves, not with the ques- 
tion as to whence church government derives its authority, but with its 
nature, and the reciprocal rights and ethical duties of the governors and the 
governed. While these things are all arranged by covenant, yet the great 
institution of the church itself was imposed by Christ, either immediately or 



I 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 71 

mediately, through his apostles. Under this Grand Charter — this Royal 
Prerogative, equal, free, independent sovereign individuals, being first spirit- 
ually qualified, meet and enter into a covenant with themselves, each with 
all, and all wilh each, that they will constitute a church, and will each take 
the word of God for their only rule of action, and submit to the determina- 
tion and authority of the majority in all matters lawful to be done. Eccle- 
siastical government originates in this covenant, under and by virtue of the 
laws of the gospel, and derives all its lawful authority from the consent of 
those governed under that law. 

Though the early churches were supervised and presided over by the 
apostles, the right of government to govern cannot be deduced from the 
right of the ministry to govern the churches, for the ministerial right itself 
is not ultimate or complete. All ecclesiastical governments that assume 
this to be so, and rest on it as the foundation of their authority, are anti- 
scriptural, and, therefore, without any legitimate authority. The right to 
govern rests on covenant by and between those entering the local church. 
Where there is no mutual covenant, there is no dominion in church polity ; 
and where there is no dominion, there is no right to govern. But even 
granting what is not the fact, that the authority of the ministry to govern 
the churches is absolute, unlimited, it cannot be the ground of a right to 
rule the churches. Assume the ministerial right to be perfect, that would 
give them no right to govern where no covenant relation exists. The 
apostles themselves did not assume that right except in some instances where 
they were pastors of particular churches, and even then their authority 
was exercised under the direction of the churches. Nothing true, real and 
solid in church government can be founded on uncertain suppositions. The 
logician, as well as the theologian, if worthy of the name, ascertains and con- 
forms to Scriptural realities, the verities of God's word ; and all church 
systems that accept traditional fictions are imperfect and censurable. The 
presumptions or assumptions of church polity must have a real and solid 
basis, or they are inadmissible. How, from the fact of being called to 
preach the gospel can we conclude his right to govern the churches ? How 
from this ministerial right, can we conclude the right of the ministry to 
consolidate all or many of the churches, institute an imperial government, 
and exercise ecclesiastical authority over them ? 

It is quite certain that the apostles Matthias, Paul and Barnabas, the very 
first ministers after the original apostles, were not made by our Saviour him- 
self, but were elected by the churches to which they belonged; namely, 
Matthias by the church at Jeru=:alem, and Paul and Barnabas by the church 
at Antioch. These ministers proceeded to the ordination of ministers, in 
the cities where they had converted men to the faith of the gospel, immedi- 
ately after they had received their apostleship. We read that they ordained 
elders in every church; which at first sight might be taken for an argument 
that they themselves chose and gave them their authority. But if we con- 
sider the original text, it will be manifest that they were chosen and author- 
ized by the churches in each city hy the holding up of hands in every church. 



72 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

For it is well known it was the custom in all those cities to choose magis- 
trates and other officers by plurality of votes, and that by the holding up of 
hands. It was, therefore, the assembly of the church that elected their own 
ministers and pastors; the apostles were only the moderators of these 
churches to call them together for such election, to supervise the same, and 
to pronounce them elected after the custom of our pastors at this day. In 
that passage in Paul's letter to Titus where he says, For this cause left I thee 
in Crete, that ihou shouldest ordain elders in every city, we are to understand 
the same thing ; that is, he should call the churches together and ordain 
them pastors by the plurality of votes, as he himself was ordained. Indeed 
it would have been a strange thing, if in a democratic city, among a demo- 
cratic people, where men perhaps had never seen any officers otherwise 
chosen than by a majority vote in an assembly of the people, those of a city 
becoming Christians, should so much as thought of any other way of elect- 
ing their ministers, than this of taking the vote of the church. As much is 
intimated by Paul when he says : Aiid when they had ordained them elders 
in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the 
Lord, on whom they believed. 

No combination of men can be durable for religious purposes, if it is not 
really voluntary ; and in considering the normal form of the churches of 
Christ, w^e must get rid of all artificial and violent bonds of union, and 
retain only those which are spontaneous and free. Long experience has 
proved that the free and independent gospel churches, as they are seen in 
the New Testament, in their full completeness, are the largest bodies of 
Christians which can exist in churches, without becoming domineering and 
oppressive. To extend the range of ecclesiastical powers beyond this, its 
Scriptural limit, would require violent and arbitrary procedure, the efiJect of 
which is always unscriptural. For brotherly love and faith, with their 
strong grasp over the membership as a whole, is sufficient to unite them in 
the moral union of the church, without extraneous bonds to supplement the 
task with its mere material unity. The truth is, the membership of a 
church can only be properly governed and disciplined by an authority, 
purely intellectual and moral ; training the will and bending the spirit, but 
not enforcing acts against the w^ill. A control, to be truly Scriptural, should 
seek always to persuade or to convince ; never to force, even in a moral 
sense. This is the extreme limit, beyond which church government should 
never pass. Across this borderland, the domain of temporal authority 
begins, on which church authority must scrupulously avoid to trench. 
Ecclesiastical rule, if it can no longer touch the conscience or the reason of 
the offender, must appeal to the voice of the denomination ; and it may 
find there a force, truly coercive, though not ceasing to be moral. 

Thus we have seen in our treatment of this subject, by a comparative 
scientific method alone, without any external evidence of any kind how we 
have been able to find out a great deal as to the social, ecclesiastical and 
religious state of the early churches at various stages of their existence. 
We have seen that some of the most important steps in the rise and develop- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OP THE GOSPEL. 73 

ment of these churches were taken while the apostles yet lived and had full 
supervision over them. We have seen how other systems sprang up inde- 
pendently of and differently from the Bible polity, after they had aposta- 
tized from the common stock and models. We have been able to go so far 
as to see that many new inventions or discoveries were made by different 
religious sects, after they had departed from the common centre, and after 
they had parted off from the true polity how the various branches divided 
up again into still different sects and orders. It gives us also the means of 
tracing in some degree the further departure made by these post-apostolic 
polities, while yet there was a faithful people in the world who still held to 
the original form of government. But in this line of inquiry it is to the 
polity of the primitive churches purely and simply that this comparative 
method is directly applied. The knowledge which it brings to light as to 
the growth of this peculiar system is most important in itself, and is estab- 
lished by the most certain proofs. The immediate object of the research 
was not the history nor the theology of the churches ; it was the government 
and laws, the ecclesiastical institutions of the churches into the nature and 
origin of which the inquirer has been searching. 

Such is pure Bible church government, the government of the whole mem- 
bership and not a part of it only, as carried out in its full perfection in a 
single independent local church. It is a form of government which works 
up the faculties of the membership to a higher pitch than any other ; it is 
the form of government which gives the freest scope to the inborn genius of 
the whole denomination and every member of it ; its polity has raised a 
greater number of human beings to a higher level than any ecclesiastical 
government before or since to the personal gifts of the foremost of mankind. 
It is the noblest government, the greatest government that human wisdom ever 
developed, and it could not have been framed by human wisdom alone. The 
human intellect never existed in the world that could, from its OAvn evolutions, 
have wrought out such a thing as this matchless constitution of Baptist 
churches. It is a government such as no other religious people ever dreamed 
of, such as no other rehgionist ever conceived or had the power to evolve. 
Reader, have you ever studied this wonderful system of Baptist church gov- 
ernment, the fundamental elements of which is here attempted to be explored? 
Have you ever compared it with other systems and noted how our Baptist 
fathers have clung so tenaciously to the Bible models and formulas ? Let 
me commend this noble study to every loyal Baptist in the land. Whenever 
our people, either for the purpose of improving or changing this Heaven- 
given pohty, shaU. thereby destroy this unparalleled government, this govern- 
ment without a model, this government without a prototype, they will have 
destroyed a government the foundation of which was laid by Christ and his 
apostles, and they will launch out on a sea of uncertainty, the result of w^hich 
no man can forecast. 



74 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE J 



CHAPTER III. 

THE LOCAL CHURCH, A DIVINE INSTITUTION, AND THE ONLY DEPOSITORY 
OF ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 

A BAPTIST churcli is tlie local assembly of which one is a member, 
composed of baptized believers in Christ, united under a common 
covenant to obey the laws of his kingdom, recognizing and receiving him as 
their only law-giver, and taking his word as their only sufficient and exclusive 
rule of action ; having a oneness of will, faith and practice, the members of 
which succeed each other, so that the churches to which they belong continue 
the same, and are preserved and perpetuated by a succession of churches and 
members of the same faith and order from the time of the apostles down to 
the present time. 

It is an organic unit, or union of baptized believers — a sovereign assembly 
of Christianized human beings, with an indelible character of individuality. 
It is a local institution which acts through government, a contrivance organ- 
ized under a divine charter, which holds the power of the whole church, 
opposite to the individual. Since then the church implies an assembly which 
acknowledges no superior, the idea of self-determination applied to it means 
that, as a unit and opposite to other churches, it is independent, and cannot 
be dictated to by sister churches, nor depend upon them any more than itself 
has freely assented to be, and that it be allowed to rule itself as best pleases 
itself. 

In its original meaning the word Ecclesia signifies an assembly. Ordinarily, 
in the New Testament Scriptures, the word denotes a Christian assembly, and 
is rendered into our language by the word church. There it never denotes 
the building, as its English equivalent " church " does. In Grecian literature 
ecclesia means an assembly called out, or summoned, to hear the magistrate 
speak unto them, and those who spoke were called Ecclesiastes. When they 
were called forth by lawful authority they were called a lawful assembly, but 
when they were excited by tumultuous and seditious clamor, then, as in Acts 
19 : 39, it is called an unlawful assembly. In ancient Athens it is said that 
ecclesia meant a general assembly of citizens, met to discuss and to decide 
upon matters of public interest. Even then, it seemed that religion entered 
into the idea of the meeting, for before business commenced a sacrifice was 
made, and prayer offered to the gods, after which the subjects were stated 
and the speakers given permission to address the assembly. After delibera- 
tion votes were taken by show of hands. Most appropriately, and in its true 
signification, the term church is used for an assembly of baptized believers, 
as in Matt. 18 : 17, where it is said : Tell it to the church, and if he neglect 
to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and publican. 



OR, THE COMMON" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 75 

In this sense, only, can it be said that a body of Christians is a church 
and has power to will, to pronounce, to command, to bind, to loose, or to do 
any act whatever. For, without authority from a lawful congregation, united 
under a covenant to obey God's laws, whatever act may be done in a promis- 
cuous concourse of believers, it is the particular act of every one of those 
who were present, and gave their aid to the performance of it and not the 
act of them all in gross, as one organic body, much less the act of them that 
were absent, or being present, were not willing it should be done. Without 
this power over its members a church must become, if not already, a body 
without order and discipline, and hence one without rehgion. It is as much 
a delusion to confer church privileges upon a body of Christians without 
power to bind and loose, as to create secular government with no power to 
punish offenders. Without this binding authority there could be no church 
order. It is this order that the great apostle to the Gentiles praised in the 
church at Colosse, when he said : Joying and beholding your order. ISTow, 
order in a multitude primarily represents their union into a body, for the 
use of such ends among themselves as thereby they seek to attain. This out- 
ward order is the form that gives this unity. A heap of stones is not one 
body, framed into a building, although each stone be of one and the same 
shape and kind, squared and ready to be used in the building. But that all 
these should be reared into a building, for it. is that which makes them one 
body. When Christ said : / huild my churchy over and above this indefinite 
commission given, it was necessary for the due and orderly execution thereof, 
that there should be an organic assembly of men which should be the seat 
of a government. It is this form and orderly union into a body that makes 
any company of men the seat of government, and to have a power among 
them ; for, how can there be a true government without a seat of jurisdiction, 
in which it must be exercised. 

It takes four things to constitute a church : — First, a divine commission 
from Christ, setting forth specifically how the church shall be constituted ; 
secondly, a number of baptized believers; thirdly, a place to meet; and, lastly, 
an assembly of those believers. As outward form and shape in the natural 
body, such as length, breadth, and thickness, are necessary to constitute it 
such ; as likewise nerves, bones and muscles ; so an union and moulding into 
one body is necessary to constitute a church. 

It is certain that ecclesiastical power and government does as much depend 
upon formality and order, as it does upon the qualification of persons. Take 
a company of Christians, or ministers, if you please, promiscuously assembled 
in a conference, synod, or an association, they have no ecclesiastical power, 
such as belongs to them in their proper churches. As judicial powers are 
not given to, nor can they be exercised by, a company of judges, assembled 
together, however learned they may be. But, when upon the JDench, clothed 
in the judicial ermine, in their respective circuits, according to law and the 
constitution, they have all the authority that attaches to their oflSces. The 
authority is the result of union, and a prior covenant, and that lawfully 
made, as well as found in persons fitly qualified. Ecclesiastical power is not 



76 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDENCE ; 

SO mucli given to Christians as it is to churclies. A church is not made up 
of a multitude met together anywhere, for then those who might assemble at 
a Young Men's Christian Association meeting could reasonably claim to be 
a church, and if that were so, those assembled at a May- day picnic would be 
a church. 

When we consider the apostolic examples of a church we shall find that 
it was necessary that Christ should appoint bounds and limits to them. As 
in civil governments, the form constitutes them as well as the matter, so that 
churches that are the seat of government, their orderly frame and forms by 
which they are united according to a law, or fundamental custom, constitutes 
them as churches. For, acts of ecclesiastical government being designed to 
have a spiritual efficacy, beyond the mere act of union, it was necessary for 
Christ to appoint the form and order in which he was to accompany them 
with that efficacy, as much so as it was to appoint and qualify persons to 
exercise it. It is no less the seat of government than it is the grand recep- 
tacle of the truth, and as such it is compared to a house : If a man know not 
how to rule his own house well, how shall he take care of the church of God f 
A church, then, that is the object of government is here compared to a house 
wherein a family is ruled. As a family has bounds and limits, so has the 
church. As no one would think of going beyond the circle of his own house- 
hold in the ruling of his family, so they who govern a church cannot go be- 
yond the limits of the organic unit to include others in its government. 

The founding of churches and marking the limits of each is the only rea- 
sonable solution of the problem of church government. If an earthly ruler 
had an infinite number of subjects scattered over the world, which could not 
be governed in a body, but by parts, distinguished and formed into several 
bodies united together, it would be his prerogative as a ruler to point out the 
several provinces and the bounds thereof, as much as to prescribe what should 
constitute citizenship therein, or the kind of laws that should govern them. 
So Christ, knowing that his disciples were to be scattered over the world, 
among the various kind of nations, more or less hostile to his gospel, and 
knowing that they could not be governed in one universal church, or in mass, 
he made it possible for them to organize into small units, as a &mily in a 
state, and by his divine power invested each church with a government com- 
plete in itself. As a family could dwell or remove whithersoever it pleased, 
so a church could organize wheresoever it pleased ; could worship in a temple, 
in the mountains, in the coves, or in the valleys. It could travel from place 
to place, from state to state, or from nation to nation, and yet retain its com- 
plete organization and worship. Its field would be the world, and its possi- 
bilities for good limited only by the providence of God. Yet it will not be 
here contended that the churches in all their perfection came into full formed 
existence at once. The history of what Christ did in giving form to the 
churches is not fully recorded in the Scriptures. In fact, the sacred record 
does not give us more than a passing allusion to the manner in which the 
churches were constituted, and describes them in action rather than gives a 
detailed account of the principles upon which they were founded and the 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 77 

way to apply them in practice. We find there merely the outline of the 
foundations of the churches, the models, as it were, after which to pattern. 

There are two modes of reasoning made use of by those who contend for 
the hierarchical form of church government. The first view is, that we 
should take the local church as established by Christ as a basis, and ascend 
upward by a sort of Imman invention to the church universal ; that by virtue 
of the same di\'ine commission Christ gave his disciples to form a local church, 
many churches may make up one chiurch, and more of those churches make 
a greater church, and then still more of the same churches make up a greater 
and grander national church, by a sort of rule of hocus pocus, for appeals, 
legislation and judicature. This meets the ^dews and practices of our Metho- 
dist and Presbyterian friends. 

The other view is that we should commence at the top of the house to build 
it, and descend downwards, after the fashion of a western dugout ; saying, that 
when Christ instituted the church, ecclesiastical power fell upon the univer- 
sal church, and that the local church has a right to its existence by virtue of 
this universal church, as the supreme power of a civil government has a right to 
make sub-political divisions, and invest them with powers of government. 
That when the first church at Jerusalem was instituted, it, in itself, was the 
church universal, but that afterwards when other churches were instituted, as 
that they were compelled to meet in several places, they were to be regarded 
still as one and the same church. So that the first church as a fundamental 
institution goes on under the general grant of a charter given by Christ. 
This view of church pohty accommodates itself to our Episcopalian and 
Catholic friends. If either be true, we will have to surrender the time- 
honored 2:)rinciples of Baptist church government and all turn Methodists, 
Presbyterians, Episcopalians, or Catholics. 

Doubtless the time is coming when the Christian world will admit that in 
common with all other organic bodies a church develops from within and 
never from without ; that the tree of ecclesiastical government grows from 
the roots upward ; that there are no branches or ofishoots springing from 
this tree, but each tree is complete in itself whose germs have been incorpor- 
ated into the system of every one of them of the same divine order. When 
this time shall come, the Christian world will cease to be misled and mystified 
by false notions of the church of Christ, that are wholly without a Scriptural 
base on which to stand ; and so little comprehended by even their very teach- 
ers, that these same teachers fail totally when seeking to make them compre- 
hensible by those who would be taught. 

The word church has had very difiTerent meanings ever since it has been 
used ; that is, people have taken difierent \dews of the subject at different 
periods, and but for the Baptists of the world the true meaning of th.e word 
would have been long since lost in obscurity. All along the line of ecclesi- 
astical history, when an indefinite idea, Tvdth regard to the nature of a 
church, seemed to be floating about, confounding it with church government, 
sometimes imagining it as something built upon the ministry, who were thus 
believed to form the substratum of the church, sometimes as if it were con- 



78 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

centrated in the pope, who thus had a right to, and was the rightful owner 
of, the church and all things appertaining to it — even then there were a peo- 
ple who believed in and practiced the independent form of church govern- 
ment. There exist many different kinds of organizations called churches ; 
mankind are divided into a number of societies, in each of which exists the 
absolute necessity of forming something like a church — a necessity without 
which they could not rise higher, however different the view that people take 
of the church, or though the idea of a church may not even yet have devel- 
oped itself in their minds as a separate idea, distinct from all other earthly 
societies. There is involved in the idea of a church a divinity which elevates 
it higher than all earthly societies. It is the basis of all derived, vested or 
delegated powers, the source of all other ecclesiastical authority. Since the 
truth and God's oversight never cease, hence his true churches never cease, 
and since with them their necessity of existence never ceases, so the sove- 
reign ecclesiastical power is never exhausted or becomes extinct, but acts in 
all cases wherever the derived or vested powers, the powers of trust, are in 
existence, it being the never-ceasing fountain, and the last resort of all 
church power. It is the only true sovereign and supreme ecclesiastical 
majesty upon earth. 

AU systems of church jurisprudence and government, whether true or false, 
are but the endeavors of those who adhere to them, to arrive at conclusions, 
as they contend, in many respects, beyond the letter of the Scriptures. 
Here is the point of divergence, and likewise the dangerous point. The 
greater the danger, however, the more we ought to strive to find out the true 
rule to guide us. 

There is no doubt but that all the errors which have arisen and led so 
many of the Christian world astray in regard to the true Bible plan of 
ecclesiastical polity have sprung from this error : That there is on earth 
such an universal church, or ecclesiastical power, outside of, and above, the 
local churches that all Christians are bound to obey. This is the heresy of 
heresies, and the one to which all others are traceable, and is plainly contra- 
dicted by the Scriptures. There is nowhere in the history of the apostolic 
churches any account where they transferred their sovereign authority to 
any body of men and invested them with all the functions of ecclesiastical 
government, or where an ecclesiastical stairway has been erected, upon 
which popes, bishops and presiding elders, through these several stairs, may 
enter upon the heritage of the Lord and domineer over his people. 

Those who adhere to this dogma of the universal church on earth, seem to 
consider that man was made for the church, and not the church for man. 
They look upon the church as one great body politic, by institution, without, 
in the first place, being able to account for that institution in an intelligent 
way. They say that Christ, by one great universal charter granted to the 
whole Christian world, did at once endow and bestow upon them ecclesiasti- 
cal power to be governed by such written rules of order and discipline as 
human wisdom should see fit to impose. Furthermore that the local churches 
should be subject to a general power, from top to bottom, by virtue of this 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 79 

divine right granted to the whole, so that all ecclesiastical power being given 
to the bishops and elders of the church, all regulations are to be made by 
them in their conferences and presbyteries, without even the consent of the 
local churches, of which they are members and officers. When called upon 
to defend this huge system, all that can be said of it is that Christ reared 
it up all at once by breathing into it the breath of life before it was born, 
and before it was brought into action by the apostles, without so much as 
hinting in the Scriptures how it was done. 

They regard the church as above and before the individuals who compose 
it, so that the existence of the redeemed man is subordinate and secondary 
to the universal church. This church acknowledges no limitations of its 
power. It assumes the immediate and exclusive control of all ecclesiastical 
matters. It calls, ordains and disposes, not only of all its ministers and reg- 
ulates their conduct, but directs even the thoughts and consciences of men. 
It, with impunity, creates high ecclesiastical offices and executes all the pub- 
lic trusts of the churches in the same manner as if subject to a military dis- 
cipline. 

On the other hand, in contrast with this, the apostolic plan is to regard the 
individual church member as above and before the church, for from the 
standpoint of polity they are the organizers of the churches, so that the 
existence of the churches is secondary, and was instituted for the individuals' 
own spiritual benefit, and is subservient to their interests. The freedom and 
exemption of the members of a church from the domination of others in 
church matters has not its origin or foundation in the church ; neither has 
the church its origin in the members, but each and all have their origin and 
foundation immediately from Clirist, who puts it into the hearts of his fol- 
lowers to institute these bodies after a model peculiarly his own. 

The church of the apostles is to be considered as an instituted organism, 
that is, an organic unit, in which that which exists in it is both a part and a 
whole, that is to say, a part in relation to other local independent churches, 
and yet a whole in itself. To each individual in a church has been commit- 
ted the exercise of a part of the ecclesiastical power of the church, and he 
must work in his own sphere. He cannot transfer that which Christ has 
committed to him as his birthright to a mythical universal church, but each 
individual is to work in it, and to work it out as laid down in Christ's word. 
Church sovereignty is inalienable. It is a right with which Christ has en- 
dowed his churches, and cannot be relinquished and transferred to another. 
A man may alienate all his earthly goods, but local self-government he can- 
not part with. It has its origin with Christ, and its spiritual life is with 
Christ. He can neither cast it off nor can it be usurped and taken away 
from him, but he is to guard it from all attempt at invasion, and to forbid 
every attempt to bring force to bear upon it. 

What Baptists demand in the name of local self-government. Catholics 
and Episcopalians insist upon in the name of divine right. Ecclesiastical 
power thus looked upon, according to its inherent nature, goes on increasing 



80 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JTJEISPRUDENCE ; 

until checked. This is particularly true of Catholic church government. It 
continued to increase until it became the withering curse of the world, and 
to check it cost some of the best blood that ever watered the soil. It is a 
lasting experience that every ecclesiastic who has power is brought to the 
abuse of it. He goes on until he finds its limits, because it lies in the very 
nature of ecclesiastical power itself. The unity of the churches dazzles, and 
thus is the more dangerous. A despotic ruler of a huge monarchical system 
of church government strikes the eye and bewilders the mind ; as it requires 
nothing but pomp and pride to estabHsh it, all sorts of people are sufficiently 
good for it. It is the vice of this system of government to raise him who 
rules it so high and to surround him with so much grandeur that the head is 
turned of him who possesses it, and that those small people who are beneath 
him scarcely dare to look at him without getting down on their knees. The 
ruler believes himself a veritable god, and the people fall into idolatry. 

The idea that ecclesiastical power necessarily implies the union of several 
churches for government has always been contested by Baptists. For 
specific proof that they are right in their contention they refer to the consti- 
tution and practice of the apostolic churches. Let those who antagonize this 
view point to any two or more churches in the apostolic times that were ever 
united for government, or had anything to do with one another e±cept so far 
as church interdependency prompted them to observe the amenities due 
from one to another. According to the teachings of the Scriptures in refer- 
ence to these churches each one of them was complete in itself and had in 
its own organism the element or germ out of which all ecclesiastical power 
has been gradually developed, and beyond which it cannot go, but was thus 
tied down by the apostles themselves. Self-church government is founded on 
the williQgness and ability of the membership to take care of their own 
afiairs, and the absence of that disposition which looks to the denomination 
for everything, as well as on the willingness in each to let other churches 
take care of their own affairs. It cannot exist where the general principle 
of interference prevails, that is the general disposition in some one else to 
usurp a jurisdiction over them, and to substitute their action for individual 
activity and for self-reliance. Self-church government implies self-organiza- 
tion, not only at the first setting out of church government, but as a perma- 
nent principle of ecclesiastical life afterwards. It does not create or tolerate 
a vast hierarchy of priests and bishops, forming a class or order to them- 
selves, and acting as though they formed and were the church, and the mem- 
bership only the substratum on which the church is founded — a hierarchy of 
priests, with the laity only as the ground on which it stands. Baptists have 
never recognized the existence of an aggregate number of churches answering 
to this definition of a church. By what authority can the seat of church 
sovereignty now be transferred from the local church to the aggregation of 
churches — from individuality to corporate sovereignty? The limitation of 
sovereignty to the local church, when the sovereign or ruling power is not an 
individual, is not only Scriptural, but important, since it exempts church 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF TEE GOSPEL. 81 

government from the various artifices of a rule by a semi-ecclesiastical cor- 
porate authority, which in secular governments is said to be both soulless 
and exceedingly arbitrary. We know that the primitive churches during 
the apostles' times continued to be free and independent one of another, and 
belonged essentially and actually to that form of polity. But when we turn 
to post-apostoHc systems the process of change by which they were formed 
has been materially different from those early churches. The local churches 
have been completely broken up and absorbed in the larger, the larger ones 
have again been swallowed up in still wider, and these in yet wider organic 
unions, until at last we find the strange spectacle of one man — the pope of 
Kome — modestly contending for the divine right to rule the Christian world ! 
Whoever would prove that any peculiar organic unity existed between 
the apostolic churches, is bound to show something in their constitution, or 
some pecuHarity in their conditions to prove the assertions. No ecclesiastical 
historian of any note has ever made any attempt to do so. The facts, there- 
fore, upon which the reasoning of those who hold to the Universal Church 
theory is founded, spring from a different source from that which they are com- 
pelled to derive them, in order to support their conclusions. In order to con- 
stitute an Universal Church in an organic sense, something more is necessary 
than that the churches composing it should be of one common mind and one 
common allegiance to Christ. Neither is it sufficient that they were modeled 
ahke, and were under the same laws of the gospel, nor does the question 
depend upon geographical relations, for the churches were scattered over all 
the then civilized world. The membership of the different churches were 
one people, and the membership of contiguous churches were still a different 
people although professing the same faith. We mean by the term member- 
ship an ecclesiastical organization, the members of which owe a common 
allegiance to the different churches of which they were members, and do not 
owe any allegiance which is not common, and who are bound by no laws 
except such as that each separate church may prescribe, who owe to one 
another reciprocal duties and obligations, and who can exert no ecclesiastical 
power except in the name of each local church. Anything short of this 
would be an imperfect definition of that organic union which Baptists call 
a church. Tested by this definition of a church the apostolic churches were 
in no conceivable sense a centralized church. They had an interest, it is 
true, in common, but this interest was exclusive in, and confined to, each 
local church, to its own government and consequently to Christ as the head 
thereof, and not a common allegiance to all the churches, for there was no 
organic union between them. The very earliest apostolic churches were 
clothed with the sovereign power of making their own rules of discipline and 
enforcing obedience to them from their own membership. The membership 
of one church owed no allegiance, except love, fellowship and good mil, to 
the government of any other church, and were not bound by any rules except 
the laws of the gospel which prevailed in all of them alike. They had no 
common standing council, no legislative body, no common treasury and no 
6 



82 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

common judicatory for appeal. There was no prescribed form by wbich the 
churches could, or did, act together for any purpose whatever ; they were 
not known as a church in any one function of government, but they were 
universally known and called by all the apostolic churches, and acted inde- 
pendently one of another. The character of any one of them might have 
been destroyed, without in any manner affecting the rest. Thus they were 
separate in their organization ; separate in the changes in the union customs 
and usages of their governments which were made from time to time for 
their own convenience. The church at Jerusalem had a government of its 
own, the church at Corinth had a government of its own, at Antioch and 
Colosse the same. They could not be equally bound by the regulations of all 
the rest, because they might in some respects conflict. If so, to which gov- 
ernment was their allegiance due? Either then the government of the 
church at Jerusalem, which was the first one founded extended originally 
over all of them, and made them all one government, or else its supremacy 
along with all the rest was yielded to a new government, erected into the 
church universal. Every one who knows anything about those early eccle- 
siastical governments knows that neither of these things happened. If the 
government of the church at Jerusalem extended over all, and was the basis 
for the church universal, what acts of government did it exercise over them 
all? On the other hand if a new government was formed, and by that 
means the church universal was set up, thus consolidating them aU into one 
for the purposes of government, when did it happen, and by whom was it 
done ? No semblance of either kind of such governments was set up, and 
no such right was ever claimed, and it will scarcely be contended for now, 
in the face of the known history of the apostolic churches. What then is 
the foundation of this universal church government ? It is certainly incum- 
bent on him who asserts this doctrine against the inferences most naturally 
deducible from the historical facts to show at what time, by what process, 
and for what necessary purposes, it was effected. It will not do to infer that 
this union took place, or to require us to reject the plain information of his- 
tory ill favor of this inference. 

The only place seemingly in the history of the apostoHc churches where 
one church ever had anything to do with another was the council held 
between the churches at Jerusalem and Antioch. Even here, in point of 
fact, this council was a deliberative and advisory body, and nothing more, 
and for this reason it was not deemed important, or at least, not indispensa- 
ble, that all the churches should be represented, since the letter of the council 
had no obligatory force whatever as a law that was bound to be obeyed, 
except in so far as it was recorded and thus became a part of the law of the 
gospel. It was appointed for the sole purpose of taking into consideration 
some errors that had crept into the church at Antioch, and of devising and 
recommending proper measures for the security of the churches against a 
further spread of the same. For these objects no precise powers and instruc- 
tions were necessary, and beyond them none were given. The duty with 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 83 

wliich it was charged was extremely simple ; but it was taken for granted 
that the council would, and did, dissolve itself as soon as that duty should be 
performed. It is perfectly apparent that the mere appointment of this 
council did not make all the churches a universal church de jure, nor one 
de facto. It is equally clear that the powers with which a universal church 
is clothed did not flow from, or constitute a church of either kind, nor a 
government of any kind whatever. The apostles had no power to form 
such a government, or presumably they had not, because they did not. They 
knew that the council was temporary only ; that it was permitted only for a 
particular and temporary object, and that they could at any time recall any 
and every power which it had assumed. It would be a violent and forced 
inference from the powers of such an agency, however great they might be, to 
say the churches which established it meant thereby to erect a church, or 
legislative body with power over the churches, or to legislate for them, and 
surrender all the rights and privileges which belonged to them as separate 
churches, and to consoHdate them into one church ; and it is an absolute fact 
established by the record that this council exercised no power which was 
considered as abridging the absolute sovereignty and independence of the 
churches. The power and authority were not possessed by tliis council to set 
up either a church or a judicatory unless given it by aU the churches 
expressly to do this thing. I conclude, therefore, that every particle of 
authority which resided in that council was derived from the two churches 
either in sending or receiving those messengers, and their duty was confined 
to the subject matter involved in that controversy. It would be incredible to 
suppose that Christ who came to earth, among other things, to establish his 
churches did not formulate a plan and a model for this peculiar kind of 
government. On the other hand we do find the independent churches with 
complete governments in each in full operation, and during the lives and 
labors of the apostles these churches were stiU unchanged, and any measure 
establishing a universal church government would have been an act of open 
rebellion, and would have severed at once all the spiritual and brotherly ties 
which bound them together. Indeed the churches were called into existence 
by the new converts to Christianity under the care and direction of the apos- 
tles, and as they continued in existence without any new grant of power, it is 
exceedingly difficult to see how they could form an universal church govern- 
ment organized by the whole of the converts to Christianity. Each convert 
was subject to his own church, and if they had been delegated or empowered 
to enter into this kind of government, they had no right to so do. It is rea- 
sonable to presume that these independent churches were of Christ's own 
creation and procurement, and were fostered and maintained by the apostles, 
and if so by what authority were they consolidated for governmental pur- 
poses? No original powers of legislation were granted them, and it is only 
from their acts that we can determine what powers they actually exercised. 
Great confidence must therefore be reposed in the apostles under circum- 
stances of this kind. If it were the intention and purpose of Christ that 



84 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

such a churcli should be founded, then and there it should have been done 
and by the apostles themselves. 

The question then naturally presents itself to the mind, whether a large 
number of distinct and independent churches, each having its own peculiar 
government, without any direct organic connection with each other, such as 
the apostolic churches were, yet all being of a oneness of will, faith and 
practice, ovdng the same allegiance to Christ, the great head of the church, 
should unite in a declaration of rights and doctrine, which they believe to 
belong to all of them alike, would that circumstance, alone, make them a 
consolidated church ? If the churches of Jerusalem, Antioch and Colosse 
had united in declaring that each church was free and independent one of 
another, and disavowing any purpose of uniting for the purpose of govern- 
ment, but for other objects specifjang them, would they thereby become a 
church ? Surely, this will not be asserted by any one. We should see in 
that act nothing more than the union of several independent churches, for 
the purpose of effecting a common object, which each felt itself too weak to 
effect alone. Nothing would be more natural than that churches so situated 
should establish a common interest, and a common agency through which to 
carry on their intercourse with one another ; but that all this should unite 
them together, so as to form them into one church, is a consequence not 
readily perceived. Yet no intelligent man, who has studied the history and 
nature of the apostolic churches, but will say that this is far more than 
those early churches did. The effect of thus uniting under a common cove- 
nant pre-supposes that the early churches were not so united before, and did 
not constitute a church for government. This fact, alone, is necessary to be 
inquired into, and, until that fact is ascertained, any reasoning as to the 
effect of entering into an union, in making them a church, does not apply. 
All who reason thus are, therefore, obliged to abandon the ground taken, 
that the churches were one in the time of the apostles, otherwise why enter 
into this union ? The apostles might, by reason of the power inherent in 
themselves, expressed by themselves, or through their lawfully constituted 
agents, have made the churches one church through all time to come ; but 
their power as to this matter could not extend to the time past. And in the 
absence of all proof that they did so make all the churches one for govern- 
ment, we can but reasonably presume that they never did so unite them. 
And whether the churches so established, under that particular form of gov- 
ernment, were intended to last forever, or only for a limited time, did not 
affect their characters as churches of sovereign power. In point of fact, 
then, the apostles, by establishing such separate governments, did by that 
very act assert their sovereignty and independence. It is singular that it 
should escape the observation of any one, that the very fact of forming this 
union, and the course pursued in doing so, attest, with equal clearness and 
strength, the previou.'^ independence of the churches. What had the churches 
to do with that which made them a consolidated church, if they formed 
together one church ? And yet in all post-apostolic systems, when the act of 



OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 85 

union was effected, the churches alone performed it, each acting for itself and 
binding itself. Those who followed after those early churches had no power, 
under their charters, to change their governments. They could do so only 
by setting their charters aside, and acting upon their own inherent right ; 
and no one loyal to the truth, and to the word of God, will deny but that 
this would be ecclesiastical revolution and rebellion. 

It requires stronger and plainer proofs than our adversaries have yet been 
able to adduce to convince us that a church of Jesus Christ once sovereign 
has ceased to be so. And yet they require of us to believe this, although 
they acknowledge that they cannot tell, with any degree of intelligence or 
precision, when, how, or to what extent the sovereignty, which they exercised 
in the apostles' times, was surrendered. According to their way of looking at 
the matter the churches are to be presumed to have yielded this sovereignty 
to a government established by themselves, which existed only by their will 
and by their own aid and support ; whose powers were wholly undefined, 
and for the most part exercised by usurpation on its part ; legitimated only 
by the acquiescence of those over whom it was placed ; whose authority was 
without any adequate sanction which itself applied, and which, as to all the 
important functions of sovereignty, was a mere name — the shadow of a 
power without a substance. Every one will admit that, had the apostles so 
provided, the form of government of the churches might be changed, 
amended, or we might establish a new one entirely. We might do this, 
because we have the physical power to do it, and not because such a pro- 
ceeding would be either wise, just or expedient. It would be, nevertheless, 
revolution in the strictest sense of the term. Be this as it may, no one can 
truthfully say that this authority can be found in the writings or teachings 
of the apostles. As the churches were first formed and constituted so did 
they remain during the lives of those eminent men to whom Christ delegated 
the power to set them upon foot. They did not afterwards take this subject 
in their own hands independently of the law of the gospel, and those who 
followed them could not do it by any agency afterwards. So far as these 
churches were concerned, the law of the gospel, from which alone they 
derived their power, contained no provision by which the churches, or the 
membership belonging to them, could authoritatively express a joint purpose 
to change their government. A joint resolution of any conference, synod, or 
convention authorizing them to do so would have been void, for want of 
right in that body to pass it. It is equally clear that there was no right or 
power reserved to the churches themselves, by virtue of which any such 
authoritative expression of the common will and purpose of the members of 
all of the churches could have been made. The power and jurisdiction 
of each church were limited to itself. If the members of all the churches 
could not, by any aid to be derived from their joint union, have effected such 
a change in the constitution of the churches, that government thus formed, 
itself, would have been equally destitute of all power to effect such a change. 
It results from the very nature of all governments, freely and voluntarily 
estabHshed, as were those of the apostolic churches, that there is no power to 



86 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

change, except the power wMch formed it. No man will be so bold as to 
deny that churclies were formed strictly by the apostles, instituted by them 
as such, and deriving all their powers from them under the grand charter 
given them by Christ. What power and authority was there other than that 
of the apostles that could do it ? Could a majority of all the Christians in 
the world or a majority of all the churches have done it ? If so, where, and 
from whom, did they get their authority ? 

It is worthy of remark that in every place in the New Testament where 
the churches are alluded to as implying a body capable of exercising the 
functions of government, they are called churches, and not a church in the 
singular. This proves, in itself, that the apostles never regarded the churches 
as an amalgamated body organized for government ; and that those who 
lived in those early times of the churches, doing and performing all the acts 
of government, never for a moment imagined that they Hved under an uni- 
versal church, in which the local church had no voice. If our opponents 
r establish that this universal church was created by the churches, and that 
they were at the time distinct, independent and perfect sovereignties, it fol- 
lows that they could not treat with one another, even with a view to the for- 
mation of a new common government, except in their several independent 
characters. We are not to presume that each church designed to change 
the character in which they negotiated with each other. Every fair and 
legitimate inference is otherwise. The sovereignty of a church is the last 
thing which it is mlling to surrender ; and nothing short of the clearest 
proof can warrant us in the conclusion that they ever did surrender it in 
apostolic times. Those who hold to opposite views contend that local 
church sovereignty was merged in the act of union, and that the gov- 
ernment established was emphatically the government of the whole Christian 
community. And yet those same people are forced to admit that they can 
neither alter or amend the government of the churches of Christ. In order 
for them to perform this function it is necessary to call again into hfe and 
action those very church sovereignties which were supposed to be merged 
and defunct, by the very act of creating the government which they are 
required to amend or change. To alter or amend the form of any gov- 
ernment it requires the same extent of power which is required to form 
one ; for every alteration or amendment is, as to that extent, a new gov- 
ernment. And every lawyer knows that of all political acts the formation 
of a constitution for government is that which admits and implies, the most 
distinctly and to the fullest extent, the existence of absolute and unlimited 
sovereignty. 

Hence Baptist churches have been favored by heaven with the blessing of 
having a Bible form of government furnished them, and the power of choos- 
ing this form of polity for themselves, and building upon it from the founda- 
tion ; and the happiness of the membership of each church is allowed to be 
the end of government. If this is really a favor from heaven it would be no 
proof of the wisdom or piety of the present age to return it to the state of 
abeyance and non-use. A successful vindication of the right to concoct and 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 87 

fabricate new forms of churcli polity, and to draw tliem from the sources of 
men's intellects and wills, is no proof of the light of the present age ; rem- 
nants of priestcraft and superstition will obscure this Hght; because it is 
impossible for a system of church government divided and distracted by dif- 
ferent orders of the ministry, peaceably and deliberately to make, mend, 
destroy and renew forms of ecclesiastical government, as intellect and Tvill 
may dictate. The Baptists, as church history abundantly verifies, are the 
only people under the sun who have preserved this birthright from the begin- 
ning. And if the circle of ages has exhibited all systems, except the Bap- 
tists, without choice as to their forms of government, and if most or all of 
these systems contain aristocratic orders of the priesthood, can time make 
stronger the evidence to prove these orders were in reality the usurpers of the 
birthright belonging to the churches of Christ, and that the solitary church, 
so fortunate as to preserve this rich birthright, owes its prosperity and promi- 
nence to the absence of priestcraft and its accursed influence ? 

From these two conflicting forms of government — the Baptistic and the 
EpiscopaHan — ^result two theories on the nature of ecclesiastical power. The 
Baptist theory is that all power is lodged in the local church, and none is 
legitimate except in so far as it governs and is itself governed by the law of 
the gospel. No human will can confer an ecclesiastical power on external 
and borrowed legitimacy ; the principle of its legitimacy resides in itself, and 
in itself alone. On the other hand the Episcopalian theory is that all legiti- 
mate power comes from above. It does not reside in the local church, but is 
lodged in one man or a favored few, and he or they who possess and exercise 
it hold it by his or their own intellectual and moral superiority. This superi- 
ority is given to them by God himself. They do not, therefore, receive 
power from the will of those over whom they exercise it ; they exercise it 
legitimately, not because they have received it, but because they possess it in 
themselves by virtue of their ministerial office. They are not servants, but 
superiors and chiefs. While Paul, Matthias and Barnabas were made min- 
isters by the local churches of which they were members, and received their 
authority in this way, yet they make ministers, in and of themselves, by vir- 
tue of a law, from whence it comes no one is wise enough to know. They 
affirm that all power ecclesiastical comes down from above, but soon, forget- 
ting that they have placed sovereignty beyond the earth, and that no one 
here below is God but themselves, they thus became dazzled by its own lustre ; 
they persuade themselves, or try to do so, that the power which comes from 
above descends upon earth as full and absolute as it is in the hands of God ; 
they are indignant that limits should be affixed to its exercise, and if there 
be nothing to stop its exercise, and nothing to stop its progress, it establishes 
a permanent ecclesiastical despotism ; whereas the Baptist theory forestalls 
the accumulation of a huge mass of power in the hands of the clergy, and 
destroys it in fact by establishing only a limited power in each church under 
the laws of the gospel. The transmission of actual ecclesiastical power from 
God direct to the ministry, taking place, altogether independently of the 
members of a local church, who, in the days of the apostles, both possessed 



88 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

and exercised it, is, to a Baptist, an enigma, a chimera and an hallucination 
of the brain. 

It cannot be denied, then, but that the historical inquiry into the primi- 
tive nature and condition of the early churches is useful and necessary. 
From this inquiry we learn, distinctly and without doubt, that the churches 
were organized separately and apart from each other, though all upon the 
same model, and that they did not constitute a consohdated government in 
respect to rule and polity. This is to be construed as the fundamental law 
of their institution, estabhshed by the apostles, according to their own free 
pleasure and sovereign will, and is the acknowledged basis of all ecclesiasti- 
cal power and authority, the sole chart by which all Christians should direct 
their conduct. It is to be construed strictly. That the law authorizing the 
organization of the churches of Christ should be construed loosely and 
liberally is the bane of the churches and the cause of Christ. This latitudi- 
narian mode of construing church government cannot apply, because the 
facts on which it is founded dre not true. This error arises from the fact 
that people have taken it for granted that church sovereignty resides in the 
government itself; whereas, the true rule is to regard government as the 
agent of those who create it, and subject, in aU respects, to the authority of 
the laws of its creation. In the gospel churches the sovereign power is in 
the membership of each local church respectively ; and the sovereign power 
of the universal church would, for the same reason, be in the people com- 
posing that church, if there were any such people in the church polity 
known as a single universal church. We have seen already, however, that 
there are no such people or church, in a strict, ecclesiastical sense, and that 
no such people had or can have any agency in the formation of a church, 
but that all church power on earth is lodged in a local church, emphatically 
as such. It would be absurd, according to all principles received and 
acknowledged among us, to say that the sovereign power is in one party, and 
the power which creates church government is in another. The true 
sovereignty of the church of Christ, therefore, is in the local churches, and 
not in the membership of the church universal, whatever that may be, nor in 
the ministry. 

Now we have already shown that it is by covenant that an apostolic 
church is instituted, and consequently those who have already entered into 
tliis institution, being thereby bound by covenant to own the actions of the 
majority, in all things lawful to be done, cannot lawfully make a new cov- 
enant amongst themselves, to be obedient to any other power in an}i:hiDg 
whatever. And therefore they that are members of an already organized 
church cannot cast off their allegiance to that church, which, if they do, 
they return to the confusion of a disunited multitude, and, whatever else 
they become, they cannot be caUed a church of Christ. 

It is therefore manifest that by the church of Christ is properly meant a 

local . assembly instituted by the consent of those who are to be subject 

thereto for their ecclesiastical government and the regulation of their 

. behaviour, not only towards God, but towards one another in point of disci- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 89 

pline, and likewise towards other churches constituted in like manner; 
which, properly, was a church wherein Christ was King and Law-giver. 
This is the natural way to account for the institution of a church, which in 
no way differs from the examples or models of the primitive churches of 
which we read in the Scriptures, as it also corresponds with the Baptist 
churches of this day. For in treating of church government we are not to 
renounce our reason, experience and common sense, though there may be 
many things in the Scriptures above reason — that is to say, which cannot by 
natural reason be either demonstrated or confuted, yet, thanks to the Lord, 
there is nothing therein contrary to it. 

Any intelligent body of men who go about to institute any government 
whatever, the first and most important thing is to agree, or to covenant 
together what shall be the form of that government, and where the sovereign 
or ruling power shall be lodged, and by whom it shall be exercised, and to set 
out the bounds and extent thereof by wliich the jurisdiction of that govern- 
ment is to be Kmited. Therefore in trying to find out the order and form of 
that government, wliich Christ has instituted for his church, it is highly proper 
to begin by seeking what kind of a body it is that should be the pillar and 
ground of the truth, the seat of power and authority by which Christ would 
have his government exercised, and within which it shall be confined. It is 
contended by those belonging to the papal, episcopal and other post-apos- 
tohcal forms of church government, that their systems are the necessary 
results of a spontaneous, irresistible " church development." This is their 
only excuse for the assumption of extra ecclesiastical powers and functions, 
frankly admitted by them as being unwarranted by the Scriptures. The 
rigidity of these systems, arising chiefly from the association and identifica- 
tion of principles of religion with written rules of church law, has chained 
them down to those views of church poHty which they entertained at the 
time when tlieir ideas were consolidated into a written code. The Baptist 
form of church government is the only system of church pohty that has 
been exempted, by a marvelous fate, from this unhappy calamity. Its com- 
mencement, it is true, in many details not mentioned in the Scriptures, eludes 
our research, and its final termination lies hid in the inscrutable future 
because it began in the infancy of the churches, and will end when the All- 
wise founder may see proper to bring them to a conclusion. 

To organize a church of Christ is to invest an assembly of baptized be- 
lievers with the authority of Christ, whereby they are authorized and em- 
powered by a commission from him, and in his name, to do that which others 
cannot do, and by virtue of which, what they do has a special efi3.cacy in it 
from the power of Christ for the sake of his mil and institution. It is this 
that makes a church different from an association. It is this that gives the 
ordinances of the church — Baptism and the Lord's Supper— their virtue and 
authority. For the ordinances, likewise the Lord's Day, w^orship and dis- 
cipUne are also institutions of Christ. It will be remembered that an insti- 
tution of Christ is that which is founded upon the mil of Christ, raising it 
up above its own nature, with an efficacy beyond itself. 



90 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

Therefore, when there is a commission of power given by Christ, there is 
a declared institution, differing only in nature and degree, according to the 
purpose for which it is designed ; as where Christ says : What you bind on 
earth shall be bound in Heaven. Go and teach all nations^ baptizing them. 
Do this in remembrance of me. These, like the church, are virtual as well 
as actual institutions of Christ, because founded upon his will and power, 
and are but the declarations of his will. For all church power and govern- 
ment which has a spiritual efficacy annexed to it must be by special institu- 
tion, and that is, in a special manner, government, by a divine institution, 
which has a power and authority annexed to it beyond what is in the com- 
mon nature of the act itself to do. 

It is not in the power or nature of man to erect a like power in any com- 
pany of men if they have it not by Christ's institution. Men may know 
how to manage and conduct an institution that Christ has erected according 
to the nature and design of that institution, and if it could be made to appear 
that Christ had appointed a supreme judicatory for appeals and legislation 
which churches have not, man's wit and ingenuity would teach him how to 
use and make use of it, but could never have authorized the erection of such 
an institution, clothed with such power, had not Christ appointed it. Because 
the church, its worship and ordinances, flow from Christ, not only as the 
author of man and his wisdom, but as the author of divine grace, as Lord 
and King of his church, and so depend upon his will. 

Whatever is set apart by Christ supernaturally as founded on his will, and 
separated from other things to be the instrument of a supernatural power 
and efficacy, is such by his divine institution, and all such power must be dis- 
posed of and executed according to his mind and will and by his own instru- 
ments. Every man is to serve God always and everywhere, but that a select 
body of men should be peculiarly singled out to organize for Christ's govern- 
ment, worship and discipline, is an institution more efficacious than belongs 
to a promiscuous company of men. And that they should have the promise 
of the power and presence of Christ to accompany them in that government, 
they derive this power from Christ's special institution. Thus Christ takes 
this simple union which otherwise would have no divine efficacy in it, and 
yet over and above this material union puts them into a divine organization 
to serve for some special end to have a further virtue in it. The gifts given 
in general to men to pray, to sing and to exhort men to repentance, are common 
to multitudes of men, but not by institution ; but that a body of men should 
organize under the law of the gospel to publicly govern, to preach, baptize, 
pray and worship in a continuous and constant way, this is by special insti- 
tution, and has the presence of a divine blessing upon it. 

Now government and worship are relative terms, and as the one must have 
a local seat for its exercise so must the other. And as the churches of the 
New Testament are formed into fixed local bodies which must be the seat of 
government and worship, the question is whether the settled form and order 
of these bodies should be set out by Christ's special appointment and institu- 
tion, or whether it has been left by him to men to frame and order as a pro- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 91 

fane society is organized ? This is a matter of such importance and weight, 
as belonging to the very substance of church government, as that if men 
could design and set up other forms in its stead, then they could overthrow 
the whole system of ecclesiastical order and government and ignore Christ 
altogether. 

The position is here taken that there is no human ground on which a 
church can rest. They whom Christ has honored and entrusted with eccle- 
siastical power hold it as his representatives. This power which is in the 
membership forming the church, is over the local church, and while each 
individual acts for liimself in the government of the church it is over him 
and he is subject to it, and this is a power which is and can be in the church 
only as it is a divine institution. It has in it a two-fold significance. It 
denotes not only a material visible organization, but is likewise the sign of a 
divinity in Christ in whom it was conceived and founded. To deny its 
divine origin and efficacy, and the setting of limits and bounds to its juris- 
diction, is to imply that it is set up by usurpation and force. If there is for 
the church no divine origin and ground and we are to concede the right to 
man to change its form of government at will, and if we are to listen to the 
voice of man separate from Christ, then his government on earth is destroyed 
and gone forever. 

There is no one man, or set of men, apart from the organic church who can 
assume to be the church, and say that powers ecclesiastical are in us alone. 
With the Universal Church, whatever that may be, from the standpoint of 
government, it has nothing to do, and the church universal has nothing to do 
with it. It is not a sum, conglomerate mass, or a chance collection of men, 
but exists in an organic unity. Neither is it measured by any determinate 
enumeration of individuals, but where two or three are assembled together in 
my name, to them the promise is given. There is no arbitrary ground in 
numbers or multitudes or in classification, but the blessing is of, with and 
for those who keep pure its order and guard its ancient landmarks, faith and 
doctrine. None who stand outside and aloof from it can direct its order, 
and none can control it beyond its own organic law save only Christ under 
the rules prescribed for its government. Its power belongs to itself, and no 
individual or order of men separate from the church or within the same 
have power to direct that authority, as there is no one exempt from its 
authority. 

The right of ecclesiastical government is in the will of those who are of 
the organic unit, while it is only in its being in the local church as a moral 
being that the will of the church subsists. Its authority apart from this has 
no foundation in fact and can be referred to only as a fiction, and held only 
in an arbitrary assumption and vacant conception. As it is instituted under 
a covenant to obey God's law has it a position and substantial ground apart 
from which the will of the church is only visionary, and its freedom knows 
no subjection and is but an empty and outward circumstance. This over- 
grown power, having destroyed the divine prestige of the local churches, goes 
on ever increasing, promises ultimately to reduce them to a purely secular 



&2 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

institution, whose regulations are limited in their sphere, and have no other 
authority than the general will of those bodies which created them may- 
bestow ; the authority of the one ever on the decrease, and that of the ether 
ever on the increase ; originally, in the primitive churches, the same, but 
now placed daily more in marked antagonism. Thus alike in authority, in 
essence, and in form, the Universal Church and the local church have ever 
been more widely diverging from the same root. Its existence outside of 
Christ's divine institution is confusion and not order, the creation of disor- 
ganization and chaos, and not the church. It is a mythical body without 
limbs, without nerves, bones or muscles, without thews and sinews; the 
breath of the divine life has never been breathed into it, and hence it has no 
soul. Man can no more create it without conforming it to the apostolic 
models and making use of the divine patterns than he can create a human 
body and breathe into it the breath of Life. It is profanity to attempt it, 
and shows a want of loyalty to Christ's reign and rule on earth. 

The church is constructed out of its own material, which itself has accu- 
mulated, building itself after its own j^attern, an institution peculiar to itself. 
Notwithstanding this, it is not to be regarded as a device which man has formed 
for his own private ends. Neither is it to be considered as a contrivance of 
human skill and government, as a device for the accomplishment of certain 
visionary objects, to be changed for the better or worse to suit human views, 
and to subserve private purposes. It does not owe its conception to the genius 
of a single man, such as Henry VIII., Calvin, Wesley, Luther, or Campbell. 
It is not Popery, Protestantism, Methodism, Presb}i:erianism, or Campbell- 
ism. It is not a reformation, nor the development of a reformation, or the 
result thereof. It is not to be counted among the achievements of human 
wisdom, for the highest ingenuity could not have compassed it, and tran- 
scends the achievements of a single man or a separate age. It is instituted 
and designed by Christ for all ages, all peoples, all places and all conditions. 

The first church founded by the apostles was not the receptacle where the 
first and only ecclesiastical power was lodged, nor was it the vehicle in which 
that or another power was carried or dispensed to the church universal, nor the 
frame-work in which another church was to be built. Neither is it the dim 
shadow of a still dimmer ecclesiastical economy that falls from some other 
man-made organization, that is lifted into the clear light of true church 
government. Its character is its own ; the mould in which it was cast was 
designed by Christ, and is not derived from any powers on earth ; it does not 
proceed through any extraneous power, and its responsibihty cannot be 
transferred, but its vocation is its own, and is judged by its own standard. 
The position is here taken and maintained, that a sovereign church of Christ 
cannot be represented. Everything that a local church does not do it- 
self is to be considered void as to authority, and only adverse in effect. 
The membership of other systems think they are free, but they deceive 
themselves. They are free while they are engaged in the election of their 
representatives to legislate for the church, and as soon as that act is per- 
formed, they are subjects. The idea of church representation is post-apos- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 93 

tolic, by which the churches are degraded, and Christianity dishonored. In 
the apostolic churches they had no representatives; the term even was 
unknown to them. 

In the post-apostolic systems, whenever a church is to be organized, they 
have furnished them, from a higher source, a constitution ready 'written 
and made to order, for all communities, all with the same trade-mark — 
priest craft — stamped upon them, thereby placing the symbol above the 
reality. Such a system makes the action of the ecclesiastical power mechan- 
ical, its postulate being a formal and mechanical conception of a church. 
When the organization of a church is thus imperfect, when, for instance, 
the soul power that forms the organization comes from a foreign source 
which enacts the laws, and then enforces and administers order under it, 
and judges all questions, whether of faith or practice, that arise from it, the 
result in the construction of such a power of unrelated and unlimited action 
is nothing short of ecclesiastical absolutism and tyranny. Christian indi- 
viduahty and religious freedom and liberty of conscience have no place or 
home in such a system. 

To stand aloof and see these constituted overgrown ecclesiastical powers 
crumbling down on every side is exceedingly gratifying to Baptists. They 
see all this unscriptural authority dying out, all unnatural restraint upon the 
local churches tottering to its fall, and the judgment of the priesthood is 
troubled at the sight; they are amazed at the revolution which is taking 
place before their eyes, and they imagine that Christianity, together with the 
churches, is about to fall into perpetual anarchy. For myself, I confess I 
see in it all the handwriting of God, who seeks thereby to bring the churches 
back to first principles, and to once again establish them in that liberty 
wherewith Christ hath made his true disciples free. 

It is to be doubted whether all the sins that have actuated men to rebel 
against God since the beginning of the world have brought more guilt and 
misery upon them than the preposterous and ignorant pretence of trying to 
imitate what God has instituted. Man not having the power to do what God 
can do, and for him to attempt to exercise such power for himself without 
express commission immediately from him, is but usurpation and profanity. 

But even if men were to originate a new system of church government ; 
they could never develop an institution that has the right to govern as a 
di\T^ne institution or to administer the ordinances of Christ's church, for none 
but a scripturally organized church has that right. Not being themselves 
omnipotent and having no divine attributes, they cannot create a divine 
institution as a fact and endow it with the attributes of a church, no more 
than an assembly of Masons could turn a lodge into a church. Baptists aim 
not to destroy the Bible form of polity, but to plant their churches as the 
apostles planted the primitive churches, and then to regulate, direct and 
restrain their abnormal developments for their own good. They force all 
concerned in their development to submit to a law which is higher than the 
church and is unchangeable. Viewed in their first cause the churches of 
Christ are the immediate creation of God and are therefore supernatural. 



94 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

Cliurcli sovereignty, or the riglit to govern the churches, is in Christ, and he 
has at his will delegated it to men whom he calls and organizes for that 
purpose. While these local churches are supernaturally constituted — having 
their original existence in the will of Christ^yet the persons selected to 
exercise powers of government and to administer the ordinances are selected 
and inducted into office through human agency — thus blending the human 
and the divine. This view is here maintained notwithstanding the fact that 
there are those who hold that church governments are founded, constituted 
and clothed with the power of the ministry alone by direct and express 
appointment of God himself. 

No reform in Baptist church polity, no change in it, whatever the advan- 
tages it may promise, can be successful if introduced, unless it has its root 
or germ in the past history of the churches Man, in true church polity, is 
not a creator; he can only develop and continue that which Christ has 
already established. In all post -apostolic systems there is no germ of Bible 
church government, and the transition to a true system would not be a 
development, but is a complete rupture with the past and at variance with 
it, and is a total new creation. It is with the greatest difficulty that neces- 
sary reforms are introduced in an old system of church government like that 
of the Baptists, and when it can seldom be done at all without a terrible 
commotion and convulsion in the whole denomination, how can we suppose 
that man can deKberately, and, as it were, with malice aforethought, found a 
new church? Without conforming to the apostolic models, how can they 
initiate, establish and sustain a new system that has no resemblance to the 
one we see reflected in the Scriptures ? To suppose it, would be like suppos- 
ing that a faction of the people, in a well-defined government, could disrupt 
the same, and set up one of their own, with impunity. In Baptist church 
government there is, perhaps, more freedom and liberty than in any other 
system, yet there is no such license as that allowed. According to the new 
theory the rights of the government are derived from the rights of the indi- 
viduals who form or enter into the compact. But individuals cannot give 
what they have not, and no individual has in himself the right to demohsh 
the original forms and to set up something new. 

After a church has been constituted it must always be borne in mind that 
the unit is not the man, but a majority of the members. But in regard to 
inter-church relations, ecclesiastical sovereignty, complete disunion was among 
the most cherished principles of the apostolic churches. The only source of 
supreme authority to which the apostles felt respect and attachment was to be 
sought within the walls of each local church. Ecclesiastical disunion — 
sovereign authority within each church — thus formed a settled maxim in the 
apostolic mind. The relation between one church and another was inter- 
church relations, not a relation subsisting between members of a common 
ecclesiastical aggregate. Hence the true view of the very earliest churches, 
under the immediate supervision of the apostles, is that, as a whole, they 
were divided into a vast number of free and independent, self-acting, organ- 
ized social assemblies, communing and associating one with another upon 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 95 

terms of perfect equality — each an ecclesiastical unit, a little nation, so to 
speak, possessing all ecclesiastical powers, executive, administrative and 
judicial, in a confused mixture. These church independencies which we call 
Baptist churches, while they are in contact one with another, they are not 
joined ; connected, but not united. This was the characteristic nature of the 
apostolic churches, so it is with our system ; there was no organic union 
between them, and there is none now. When, however, these many inde- 
pendent churches in the course of religious and social development could 
not withstand the gradual desire and necessity for a social voluntary union 
of their many elements of strength, and were forced into closer contact, they 
met, nevertheless, as separate elements and desires, separate rights, privileges 
and under separate ecclesiastical charters. 

The church of Christ is a divine institution although organized in the 
manner herein-before pointed out. A divine institution is that which is 
founded upon the will and command of Christ. It is the elevation of a 
thing above its own natural, or moral efficacy, with a divine essence beyond 
it. An Odd FeUows' Lodge is an institution, but it is not a church, because 
it is not founded upon his express command. To immerse a believer in 
water, if done according to the laws of Christ, is an ordinance, and there- 
fore it is a divine institution because it is a command of Christ. Likewise 
the Lord's supper, the observance of the Sabbath day, preaching of t*ne 
gospel, and the like, are institutions of Christ because founded upon his will. 
These things depend upon his will and are authorized by a special commis- 
sion from him, and have a special efficacy from Christ, and must of necessity 
be institutions authorized by him. 

It is an organization instituted by believers in him under his declared will 
concerning such things as are exercised above its common nature to some 
further spiritual end and efficacy. While Christ and his apostles were not 
as explicit in the New Testament in founding the churches as Moses was 
with his express positive directions, yet there is reason why they should not 
have been. It was in the infancy of the civilization of the world when 
Moses founded the economy under which the Jews worshipped, and they 
needed all the details of the law to assist them in a proper understanding 
of their duty. God dealt with them accordingly by giving them here a line 
and there a line. Besides, there was a blending of church and state under 
that system, and the law had to go into details to make plain the intricate 
relations of the two powers, the blending of which was on purpose to estab- 
lish both upon a national basis. 

But the apostolic churches were instituted upon a different plan; they 
delivered their rules to the churches alone, at first by word of mouth and 
by example. Men were converted by them through the medium of preach- 
ing, and they organized them into local churches and settled ecclesiastical 
government and order amongst them, as well as faith. It was their pleasure 
as well as their design to leave to the good sense of posterity those rules 
which the apostles expressly gave out to the churches, by mentioning what 
those practices were in the churches. So that what was delivered to them 



96 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

in the way of positive commands, is shown to us, by way of example, how the 
churches were then governed. For we hear the apostle saying, We have no 
such custom, nor the churches of God. And those customs of the churches 
were afterwards recorded by the writers of the New Testament and thus 
handed down to us. Then we have both the precepts and practices of the 
primitive times, and also the footsteps of the apostles remaining in the 
churches to this day. 

The proper understanding of the will of Christ in the institution of his 
churches is a matter of vast importance. Some reason, that, inasmuch as 
Christ has commanded his disciples to form this union and given them liberty 
so to do, that therefore they may likewise employ their reason to set up any 
form of government they please. But in so doing man's reason becomes a 
judge, and he takes upon himself Christ's authority, in inventing and 
authorizing something not found in the Scriptures ; whereas we should be 
content with the church Christ has appointed. Man's reason is a good thing, 
and indispensable in church government, but it serves only as a witness and 
a help that applies a thing according to what, by reason, he gathers from the 
Scriptures concerning that government. Man's inventive genius has been 
quite active in framing divers forms of church polity. Some of them are so 
overgrown and deformed that it is not possible to reform them except by 
reforming them out of existence, body and soul, and reducing them to the 
simple apostolical models, and placing responsibility in the local sovereign 
church. 

The only way we can be assured as to what is a church of Christ is by 
examples which we meet with in the Scriptures, without which we could not 
discover the will of Christ. "We should therefore endeavor to demonstrate 
that the examples and practices of the primitive churches are to be taken as 
rules to us. For if an apostolic example or practice be written as a rule, 
there it will bind because there is no chance or supposition of error. For 
whatever the apostles did in the churches, are laid down as patterns and 
rules for us to follow. Those examples of the churches recorded in the 
Scriptures, not complained of by the apostles, Baptists take to be directions 
from Christ, and for that purpose they were laid down in writing, and we may 
safely take them to be commands of Christ, as well in matters to be done, as 
to be believed. They are denominated Acts of the Apostles and were writ- 
ten on purpose to show what the apostles taught them to observe concerning 
church government. It is further said that passing from example to doctrine, 
Jesus began both to do and to teach those things which pertained to his king- 
dom and the government of the churches. So that while we have not an 
express authority for every minute detail of church government, yet we have 
the general and fundamental principles, which, if we can make out, it is 
enough. This peculiar system of church la^y acknowledges the Scripture in 
the broadest and highest sense, but retains its own vitality even with refer- 
ence to its o"wn customs and usages in this, that it decides, by its own organ- 
ism, and upon its own principles, and in its own way, on the interpretation 
of the Scriptures when applied to concrete and complex cases Even if Bap- 



97 

tist church jurisprudence should be reduced to written rules, as in other sys- 
tems, the living common law of the gospel would lose as little of its own in- 
herent vigor and expansiveness, as it has lost in the civil law of the land. 
Every lawyer understands this perfectly. If Baptists were to reduce their 
unwritten law to a code it would be as the garnering of ripened fruit of a 
savory taste, while it was the pronounced intention of the promulgators of 
other systems to prevent interpretation by referring everything to the legisla- 
tive body of the church for determination, appointed by the conference or 
synod for that purpose. 

That these institutions were uniform in polity and practices is also plainly 
to be seen. Although the Jews differed in language, in fashion, in manners 
and in civil government from the Gentiles, yet we read that the same kind 
of officers and practices were ordained in all aHke. That all the churches 
were founded under the direction of Christ after a uniform pattern is evident 
as in the case of Paul, who never saw his Saviour in the flesh, nor any of 
the apostles except James, yet all the churches set up by him were exact 
models of those erected by the other apostles in far distant lands, without 
consulting one another. This could not be done except that they must have 
been guided by the same Spirit, and as going by the same rule common to 
all, which was nothing more than the command of Christ. The apostle 
exhorts his brethren to follow him as he followed Christ. Be ye followers of 
me even as I am of Christ; and commends them in that they had kept the 
ordinances as he had delivered them, saying of them. Those things which you 
have both learned and received, and heard, and seen in me, do. That is, those 
things that you have received by hearing and learned by seeing. 

Christ and his apostles did not first set about preparing a written constitu- 
tion and laws for the churches ; the first work was to set up the frame-work 
of the churches and put them in motion, and then call upon those estab- 
lished afterwards to imitate the first pattern given them, and whenever they 
departed therefrom they reduced them to that which they had first received, 
and learned from the apostles, as containing an immutable rule, not to be 
changed. As I ordained in the churches of Galatia so do ye also. If they, 
under the immediate supervision of the apostles, inspired of God, had not 
the liberty to swerve from them, certainly we have no such authority. This 
is both natural and reasonable, for matters of practice and order are as well, 
if not better, represented in examples than in rules, as men are moved more 
by examples than by precepts. 

What was the use of writing a law specifying that the churches were to be 
instituted in this way, or in that way, or that they were to have such and 
such officers when they already had them ? But rather to exhort them to 
maintain the form of government already existing among them, is a suffi- 
cient law for us to follow. If it had been necessary for them to have written 
to a company of believers at a distance, who had not already been organized 
into a church, then it would have been reasonable for them to have written 
the laws and rules of the church, and recording exactly how to form it. But 
Christ had first to convert them through the preaching of his apostles who 
7 



98 A TKEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

were present to organize them into a church. But before the Scriptures were 
written and compiled, they had abeady organized very many churches into 
that cast which Christ had appointed, and by both example and word of mouth 
had taught them how to order their OAvn affairs. Besides, we resort to these 
same sources to find out what is the doctrine of Christ, and why should not 
as great a liberty be left us to find out Christ's poHty as his doctrine ? It 
being quite as necessary that men should have directions to guide them in 
the government of the Lord's house, as in the ordering of their own house- 
hold affairs, as to what they shall believe. Baptists have never resolved 
themselves into law-makers, and then boldly intruded themselves into the 
judgment-seat of God, and damn their members for breaking laws, not of 
God's, but of their own making, lest they involve themselves in the same 
condemnation. For wherein thou judgest another thou condemnest thyself. 

It is evident to be seen that, as it is the Lord's house, he has not left it 
unto man to frame and model his building to what proportion he please ; 
Christ's body instituted, like the natural body, it is to have set limits to it : 
though it be ever so small, it is a perfect body, as much so as if it be a large 
one, and has bounds set to it, both as to parts and proportion of stature, which 
none should exceed. The ingenuity of man could have taught him how to 
institute a body politic, but this would never have authorized the erection of 
such a body armed with the same powers of a church, if Christ should not 
be found to have appointed it. Because both the church and the ordinances 
of the same flow from Christ, not only as the author of the church, but as 
the author of the grace by which it was instituted, as Lord and King of his 
church, and so depend upon his will. And if, therefore, he by his will has 
made an institution modeled after a certain fashion, man cannot make a par- 
allel to it, and certainly it is parallel to it if it be supposed to have power 
and influence such as the other has which Christ has instituted. 

It is a law of nature that nothing can work beyond its own sphere and 
aptitude. Whatever men may do may be sanctified to subserve the institu- 
tions of Christ, yet not to raise up anything new on a level with an institu- 
tion of Christ and to give it a divine efiicacy beyond itself. A spiritual 
body parallel to such a spiritual church as Christ has instituted is what 
exceeds the power of man, be his intentions ever so good. This would be as 
much impossible as if a man were to attempt to produce a spiritual act of 
grace of the same nature as that which the Holy Spirit produces. Natural 
gifts and natural parts may be subservient unto Christ who sanctifies them, 
but they cannot erect a church of Christ and endow it with ecclesiastical 
powers. Christ's government then cannot dispense with man's help, and he 
must utilize it, but he cannot usurp it or in the first place generate any part 
of it. 

In the episcopal form of government the object is different. In the one, 
it is to give effect to the government and to preserve it in its integrity 
according to covenant. In the other, it is to act on the government itself 
by any change that may be desired whether it be lawful or not. In the 
iipostolic form of church government the membership cannot go beyond the 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 99 

limit prescribed in the law of the gospel, without taking the government into 
their own hands, and overthrowing the existing one. To make church gov- 
ernment competent to its objects, its powers must be commensurate, under 
proper guards, with those of the sovereignty, and to preserve the govern- 
ment in the hands of the membership of each church, the means of restrain- 
ing the church within the limits prescribed to it by the law of the gospel, of 
enforcing a faithful execution of the duties enjoined on it, and punishing a 
violation of them, must be vested in, and performed by each church itself. 
The whole system, as heretofore observed, must turn on the suffrage of the 
membership, and the government, that those in office may find that they can 
obtain nothing independent of the membership, nor from them, nor even 
escape discipline, otherwise than by a faithful adherence to forms and doc- 
trines. 

If Christ had not settled the order, discipline and government of his 
churches, we should have no authority to endeavor to reform any thing we 
might see amiss therein, when the order and discipline of the churches of 
Christ are impaired and almost lost. For there would be no rule to go by in 
such reformation. Without a model and a rule there could be no setting 
things right when amiss, no reformation, as Paul says in the ninth chapter, 
tenth verse, of his epistle to the Hebrews, if we did not know, by the rules 
and laws of his own institution, what it is. 

It cannot be said that Christ has left us in a perpetual ignorance of his 
will in a matter of so great importance as the institution and government of 
his churches. And certainly we cannot be discharged from the necessity of 
searching the Scriptures in order to know whether Baptist church gov- 
ernment be true, as well as to see whether other systems are false. This 
duty obliges us so far to search into matters of government in general, and 
especially church government in particular. TVe cannot distinguish truth 
from falsehood, right from wrong, or know what loyalty we owe to Christ, or 
what we may justly expect from him unless we know what kind of a church 
he has instituted as well as where its seat of power resides. 

Now if powers ecclesiastical do not reside in the local church as we have 
contended, but have been transferred from the local to the universal church, 
the authority to do so must have been given to the first church established 
at Jerusalem. If given to that church, a matter of such importance requires 
good proof, when, where, how, and by whom it was done. But the Scrip- 
tures testifying to the contrary, that Christ located the seat of government 
in the local church, and that no such thing as a church universal was insti- 
tuted by him, we may safely say that Christ never gave any such power to 
the church at Jerusalem to transfer its sovereignty. If he did not give it to 
that church he did not give it to any or to all, for every one is compre- 
hended in all ; and if no one has such power, it is impossible that all can 
have it when no man knows, or can tell, where, when and by what hand it 
was given, nor what is the sense of it. If the right of the church universal 
was given by Christ, all is well ; no better right could be asserted. But if 
there be no justification for the exercise of such power by a promiscuous 



100 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

body of men, then that which was usurpation in its beginning, can of itself 
never change its nature. On the other hand if Christ instituted the local 
church and endowed it with powers ecclesiastical, that which was true in the 
beginning is so now and must be forever. And he that persists in using a 
power in matters so sacred as that of a church to which he is not by divine 
right entitled, thereby aggravates it, and takes upon himself all the guilt of 
his predecessors and adds the offence of treachery to usurpation. 

In the first place it is agreed upon by all that a local particular church is 
such a body as has entire power to cast a member out by excommunication, and 
that casting out of a church is, consequently, by the law of communion and 
fellowship, a casting out of all the rest, one church thus reverencing the 
action of the other until they see apparent cause to the contrary. Likewise, 
even in all hierarchical systems of government, each particular church feel 
themselves perfectly competent to examine and admit ordinary members 
without the help of other churches. Both acts of receiving and casting out 
are acts of power, the one opening the door and the other shutting out. He 
that opens may also shut ; he that shuts may also open. The act of receiving 
them, or not receiving them, is an act of power of as great moment as to 
cast them out. If a church, then, is by Christ entrusted with the one power 
they should be intrusted with the other, without foreign interference. Christ's 
honor and the purity of the church is as much concerned in what members 
are taken in and owned as members as what are cast out. This power has 
its parallel in civil government ; for to enfranchise and to disfranchise belong 
to the same power, and if there be a difference, to enfranchise is the 
greater, for in so doing they admit foreigners to citizenship, and when a man 
is disfranchised the act is done to a citizen who theretofore had been 
entrusted with all the rights of a free subject. 

But if it be contended that to excommunicate a man is to cast him out of 
the church universal and therefore it is a greater act ; to this it is answered 
that by the act of admission he is taken into fellowship with sister churches, 
not actually or formally, but consequently, because the churches have and 
hold communion and fellowship one with another. For if it can be said 
that all churches have an interest because they cast a man out, so they have 
an interest also in admission, and they cast a reflection upon the church 
that receives him, if they receive him not by virtue of his fellowship. And 
hence, if the universal church has a right to join in his excommunication 
they ought to join also in his admission, as they are as much interested in 
the one as the other. It is evident from this that to receive a member as 
well as to expel him requires a local church with a local seat of power and 
government without interference from the outside, and that if single congre- 
gations may admit a man to fellowship without consulting others they may 
excommunicate him. 

This is evident from the standpoint of those who are not Baptist, from the 
fact that they provide a way for those who are to be excommunicated to appeal 
from the decision of the local church to a higher judicatory to inquire whether 
he has been justly cast out ; and if aU churches are to be thus consulted in 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 101 

casting him out they ought also to provide for a higher tribunal than the 
local church to pass on his fitness to be admitted, for church government 
ought to be a sensible thing and no contradictions in it. Besides, Paul com- 
mands his Thessalonian brethren to whom he writes, That ye ivithdraw your- 
selves from every brother that walketh disorderly ^ and to have no converse with 
them. Now how is a whole universal church scattered over a whole prov- 
ince to know this brother when he happens to move among them ? Does it 
not rather mean that the local membership who happen to know him are to 
withdraw themselves from him, and to have no conversation with him in 
order that he may be brought to repentance ? 

Besides, Paul says. If one member suffer, all the members sufer. Thus we 
see that locating discipline in the local congregation it serves a double pur- 
pose, both as respects themselves and the person to be excommunicated, and 
his good, showing that it must be one body. He is to be first dealt with by 
the brother he has ofiended, and then he is to take one or two with him as 
witnesses before he is brought before the congregation. This is to be done 
by those who are not strangers to him ; and, therefore, they are to sympa- 
thize with him, to be humbled together with him for his sin. In the follow- 
ing verse the apostle says, Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in 
particular. That is, the church at Corinth being a particular local body they 
have a special relation one to another more than to any other churches. And 
this sympathy and this mourning is to show themselves clear of the matter, 
which would otherwise be a sin of the church. As the members of a family 
will mourn for the sins of a member of that family, so especially in this 
special nearest relation of all others each member is to mourn and sorrow for 
the sins of a member, as if it were the sins of the whole church, because a 
dishonor is thereby reflected upon the whole. It is therefore necessary when 
a man's sins are ripe for public admonition that his own particular people 
should know it, that all these labors and admonitions should be before his 
own church where the seat of discipline is lodged, that the enormity of his 
transgression might bring him to repentance. 

Then to excommunicate a man is a law of a local church, and of necessity 
must be much more efiectual to work upon a delinquent than if it were 
brought before aU the universal churches in the world who know nothing 
about his sin at least is effected by it, but remotely, as these bodies must be 
remotely situated one from the other. To make this matter plain the apostle 
says in the same letter to the church at Corinth, You have not mourned that 
he that hath done this deed may be taken away from among you. Showing 
that in the act of excommimication itself the church should be present in a 
body, and if they are to be present that they may mourn when any are thus 
cast out, their presence is much more required before the act of expulsion, 
because their labor and sympathy with and for him might be the cause of his 
repentance and retention in the church. 

Besides this view to take of it, a local church has a joint interest in this 
discipline to judge and to sit in judgment by way of voting by show of 
hands, that all or a majority of the church may concur in the sentence in 



102 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

the act of exclusion. This corresponds with courts of justice in the trial of 
offenders before the law. They have such an interest in cutting a member 
off, like a jury ; they have joined together that they may judge of the facts 
and of his obstinacy and the genuineness of his repentance. Why, then it 
follows that the power to discipline and to excommunicate must rest in 
every local church. This is the fairest law in the world, that a mau be 
judged by his own brethren. And we account it the glory of Baptists that 
no member's standing as a Christian and no man is to be subjected to the 
judgment of outsiders, but that he is to be tried by his own brethren. And 
if no outsiders have a right to sit in this judgment, then the power of all 
acts of government must lie within the body of the local church, because 
there are no other ordinary constant church meetings of the membership of 
a church for discipline, but by congregations. 

There is an old maxim, and a true one, that says, The first in every hind 
is the measure of the rest We have then to contend that the first church in 
existence with complete local ecclesiastical government was such a church 
as we are now pleading for. If this first church was a proper repository for 
church power, and that was to be transferred from that to another, with 
power to establish a still higher one, what became of that power and right 
when churches came to be multiplied, having the very same mould and pat- 
tern ? How could this power come to be taken away, or come to lose it, and 
it transferred unto a universal church of many congregations ? If upon this 
association there had been cast a new power, yet the old former power must 
be supposed to stand still entire, or else they lose it, unless Christ had mirac- 
ulously created this power, which we deny. It cannot be said that inasmuch 
as the multiplication of churches was accidental, so a new accidental power 
must come over them which they had not before. And suppose that a local 
church, alone by itself, can be supposed to have an accidental independency, 
yet that positive power we see in the first church with which Christ invested 
it, for positive acts of government, was not given it because there was no 
other church in existence, but because it was a complete church in itself. 
If the first church had this complete power, it is not to be taken from it by 
the multiplication of churches. For the multiplication of churches may be 
accidental or Providential, but the form and mould they were cast in by 
Christ at first is the essential form that constitutes them churches and 
makes them complete ecclesiastical bodies. 

We know of no power surpassing the human, unless it be the divine ; but 
a divine power never miraculously shows itself except to bear witness to the 
truth and to give authority to those who announce it. If, therefore, the 
glory of this particular kind of government was miraculously supported by 
a more than human power, it was good in itself, and to change it, it will 
take another miraculous manifestation of that same power that first insti- 
tuted it. If we lay aside the word miraculous it will be hard to know how 
Christ should give such a virtue to this form of church government, and to 
the people under it, unless there had been an excellency in its government 
and discipline far surpassing anything ever before seen on earth, or how 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 103 

that can be called ill in its nature which Christ so gloriously supports and 
no people have ever been able to improve upon. 

This species of religion and church government by deputy is the cause of 
all the benighted darkness now extant in the world ; and parties and indi- 
viduals, pretending to be intelligent, who are thus governed, are groping in 
darkness and ignorance. The most ignorant, enslaved by priestcraft, 
discerns goodness by the light of his own conscience, and distinguishes 
between a Scriptural and unscriptural government by the light of his senses 
as well as his reason. Bat authority, whether it be priestly or otherwise, by 
depriving us of conscience and reason in religion and church government, 
causes such calamities and blunders as are encountered by a blind man who 
is a lunatic. It assures us that neither the light of the Scriptures nor 
reason can select a religion nor a church government for the sake of making 
a tyrant of this very reason. It confines us to the will of others as the 
authors of its dogmas, but refuses to our human reason a capacity to con- 
strue either, that it may construe both by its human reason to enslave and 
defraud ours. Yet this baneful influence only serves to rivet the conclusion 
that the common sense and common honesty of a local church of Christ is 
both a wiser and honester source of religion and ecclesiastical government 
than the authority of popes, cardinals or bishops, or separate interests in any 
form. 

The glory of Baptists has been in their devotion to the local church, and 
they have the names of those who have gone willingly to the stake to preserve 
its order as an immortal heritage. Their history is an universal attestation, 
that when the life of the local church has been the deeper in its higher 
development, the world has apprehended in this peculiar people the glory 
of the work of our ancestors in preserving this enduring heritage. They 
have ever contended that in the decadence of local church government 
there is^ corresponding loss of personal individuality which inspires men 
with a love of the church, and likewise a love of the truth. 

It was the degradation of the local church and the exaltation of the 
Universal Church body politic that has been the cause of the death of 
thousands of the choicest Christian men and women that ever graced the 
annals of the world's history. When the sacred ness of the Bible form of 
church government is no longer regarded, when it is no longer apprehended 
as a divine order, but as devised by men and shaped by a law of expediency, 
and subject to caprice, then the life of Christianity is corrupted in its very 
source. The sacred counsels of God are impenetrable; but the ways by 
which he accomplishes his designs are often evident. When he intends to 
prosper and exalt a people, he fills both them and their leaders with grace 
and all the virtues suitable to the accomplishment of the end desired ; and 
takes away all wisdom from those who have departed from the faith and 
practice of the gospel. The history of hundreds and hundreds of denomi- 
nations furnish examples of this kind. The Lord will surely take care of 
and prosper his own. The farther the departure from the apostolic church 
government the greater will be the rebellion against the faith of the gospel. 



104 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPEUDENCE ; 

Possibly nothing has done more to distort and pervert the order of 
church government than the efforts of those who contend that the early- 
churches were modeled and fashioned after the Jewish synagogues. The 
mistake which they make is analogous to the error of one, who in investi- 
gating the laws of the material universe should commence by contemplating 
the existing world as a whole, instead of beginning with the particles which 
are its ingredients. 

True church government is not Judaism, or the development of Judaism. 
Unlike it and the papacy, it does not aim at again confining man or the 
churches in the environments of outward ordinances, human laws, human 
creeds and doctrines. As Christianity was a new creation, so were the 
churches charged with its propagation, and they called to their aid entirely 
new laws for their government. Nothing has ever been more pernicious to 
the growth of true Bible church polity than the habit on the part of post- 
apostolic sects of looking backwards rather than forwards for models of 
excellence. They looked not only to the old Jewish priesthood, but to the 
far-fetched analogies between the Christian and Mosaic economy to justify 
their own ecclesiastical polity. From this source has sprung many of the 
conceits and heresies which have cursed these so-called churches and made 
them, instead of the plain and simple bodies they have become, some of 
them, powerful engines of tyranny and oppression. Whereas, in fact, the 
old order of things and the views formed on them, had to decay, and the 
new church and an apparatus of new notions of church polity, congenial to 
it had to spring up before the seeds of true church government could take 
root and come forth in all their exuberance and beauty. 

It is a universal law of nature that a new organization shall always be 
preceded by the entire dissolution of what has gone before. In the day of 
the founding of this church was the day when a new revelation was daw^ning 
upon a new world, of a new religion beginning to breathe, of human liberty 
struggling to be born. So, too, a new church can arise only when the old 
one has been wholly dissolved, its atoms freed from each other, and its old 
arrangements broken up, that every particle may be at liberty to become 
part of the new living frame, according to some other law than that which 
governed the foundation of the old social unit. Judaism had served its 
purpose and had to be dissolved by Christian influences before the formation 
of this wonderful church became possible. The disciples set about the task 
of reorganizing a new creation and endeavoring to arrange it in logical order 
and sequence. 

Roman Catholicism was the first to spring up and conform its polity to 
that of Judaism and its system of priestcraft. When we look for a moment 
kt some of the peculiar characteristics of these people we will not be sur- 
prised at the wide departure they have made from the simple patterns of 
Christ's churches. It was, and is now, the prevailing notion among 
Catholics that the Scriptures do not contain all the declarations and teach- 
ings to be observed in church government, but that many things belong to 
what they call, deposits of doctrine, which were not made a matter of record. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 105 

Pontifical councils, presided over by the pope, felt themselves authorized to 
enact, as revealed word or truth, whatever has come down from the begin- 
ning as the traditional teachings of Christ or his apostles, such teachings as 
generally relate to doctrine. In cases of doubt and difficulties they feel 
themselves competent to examine the evidence and decide whether the doc- 
trine be really revealed, and, after the matter has been solemnly adjudicated, 
it is no longer allowed to question a truth sealed with their approval. Their 
judgment is claimed to be infallible. By this is meant the Providential 
guidance of the Holy Spirit, both directing and enlightening them in their 
doctrinal decisions, that they may not mistake error for truth or enact as 
divinely revealed what wants the stamp of divine authority ; and whatever 
is thus revealed is final and irreversible. The lay people, being not thus 
supernaturally endowed with the capacity of interpreting the Scriptures, are 
debarred the privilege of even reading for themselves, for the pope and bishops 
claim the supreme authority in determining the meaning of the Scriptures. 
The authority, or source from whence these ecclesiastical laws derive their 
force is held by this people to be vested in the pope as the vicar of Christ, and, 
consequently, whatever Christ could do he may do. Hence we can see how 
impossible it is for such a people to continue steadfast in the apostles' doctrine. 

Even as early as B.C. 300, both the civil law and the law of religion was 
entrusted to the interpretation of a body of men called Roman Pontifis. 
Over every class of people they had the power of judicial decision and pun- 
ishment. They had the power themselves of making new laws aud regula- 
tions, and were neither amenable to the Senate nor people, nor subject to any 
court of law. This will enable us the better to understand the very strange 
definition of the term jurisprudence given by Ulpian, one of Rome's greatest 
lawyers, found in Justinian's Institutes, namely. That it is the knowledge of 
things divine and human, the science of things just and unjust. 

In the" Greek Catholic church there was established what was called the 
Holy Legislative Synod, charged, as its name indicates, with legislating for 
the church, and a separate body sprang into existence called the Holy Gov- 
erning Synod, which administered religious law. Kings and people trembled 
at the decrees of these bodies and obeyed their paramount will. The Roman 
Catholic church even became more perverted and departed more widely from 
the apostolic patterns. It was the great aim of the priesthood in legislating 
for the church to bring civil questions within the jurisdiction of the church; 
and by mixing things divine with things human, the church attained a 
powerful influence over the proceedings of ordinary courts of law. The 
scope of this church legislation, so barren of good, and so prolific of evil, 
embraced many subjects of pure, civil and municipal law, such as relate to 
marriage and marital rights, divorce and legacies, especially such as were 
given for pious uses. A great rivalry sprang up between the canon and the 
the civil law. The clergy were the repositories of both systems and had the 
decision of how much should be assigned to the one and how much to the 
other. To be in those days a D.D. or LL.D., or both, was a great distinc- 
tion. Thus we see that at the very outset, as it were, of the Christian 



106 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CITURCH JUMSPRTJDENCE ; 

religion there was laid a broad and deep foundation by these people, upon 
which later and more recent denominations have ever since been buildiog. 

But in contrast with this overgro^yn and perverted system, view Baptist 
church government in all its simplicity, beauty and scientific completeness. 
In this system of church polity there has been a period of material and 
spiritual prosperity, of which I think all Baptists will agree in saying that 
it has had no parallel in ecclesiastical history. Of late years this growth 
has been wonderful We ourselves do not seem to understand the elements 
which have brought it about. But a few years ago, even in the lifetime of 
our middle-aged brethren, the Baptists of the United States were but a dis- 
organized body of Christians, seemingly without any system of government 
worthy of the name. Our churches seemed to have no mutual dependence 
or inter-communion one with another except that consequent on their me- 
chanical union. But thanks to a kind Providence the red-letter day of 
their development has come. Now we must particularly remark the maimer 
in which all this is done. In the material world, if, for a new purpose, a 
new organ is wanted, Nature never fashions it in secret or apart, finishing 
her work by attaching the new product to the structure intended to be im- 
proved. Men, when they design to improve a house, bring the necessary 
materials from elsewhere, and make their addition by attaching it. Not so 
in true church government with its wonderful development. The builders 
evolve from what is already pre-existing — ^there comes an improvement, not an 
addition. It is not a mere growth or development alone that occurs ; but when 
that process has gone on to a certain extent, a new condition of things abruptly 
takes place, a difierence in structure, a difference in function suddenly arises ; 
for the new things have issued forth from the old by an insensible shading, 
so that we cannot tell at what time the one ended or when the other began. 
In spite of the rapidity with which the change may have taken place, we 
still discern consecutive points bearing a determinate relation to one another ; 
they do not stand in the attitude of antagonism. Notwithstanding this, 
apostolic church government is conserved and preserved in its integrity." In 
this system there is no place for a Pope, a Bishop or a Ruling Elder. As 
the visible hands of these functionaries are not seen and traceable in the acts 
and teachings of the apostles and primitive churches they wiU not be per- 
mitted to have a place in God's ecclesiastical government on earth. There 
is no place here for pontifical bulls, canons and decretals for Christ, the Lord 
left a law-book for the use of the churches which is an all-sufficient guide. 

The three preceding chapters taken together now furnish us with sufficient 
material for the abstract study of ecclesiastical government, the essential 
elements of which have each been eepraately considered, enabling us to draw 
conclusions of momentous importance with regard to the churches and to in- 
dividuals. These truths have been more distinctly developed in the course of 
the history of the churches ; the more essential their importance, the more 
steadily and distinctly have they gradually unfolded themselves, and become 
as natural to the membership and to the churches. AVe have now to consider 
in the abstract the laws under which they are combined. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 107 



CHAPTER IV. 

BAPTIST CHURCH CUSTOMS AND USAGES; OR THE COMMON LAW OF THE 

GOSPEL. 

IN all well-regulated systems of government, wHetlier secular or ecclesias- 
tical, there is necessarily involved three elements of power which must 
be exercised. That is to say, the legislative, the executive and the judicial. 
In secular governments these functions are kept separate and are exercised 
by different individuals and branches of government. There must be a 
legislature to enact the laws, an executive to execute them, and a judiciary 
to expound and interpret them. Happily for Baptists, they find their laws 
already enacted. The Bible is the law-book of the churches and contains 
the laws of both faith and practice. As to the other two remaining elements 
of government — the executive and judicial — both are retained in every 
separate Baptist church. Each church becomes its own judge, and executes 
its own judgments. 

The error involved in the maxim of a division of ecclesiastical powers is 
universally recognized in other systems of church government, but it can in 
no instance be shown that there was such a division in the apostolic churches. 
This division was made and recognized in post-apostolic times. It has 
wrought the greatest confusion in theory and disaster in practice. It is re- 
futed alike by the facts which have been adduced to sustain it, by logic and 
by the universal practice of the apostles in those first churches. Instead of 
the common endeavor toward the common good, it has resulted in conflict 
and the antagonism of divided ecclesiastical powers, and, instead of insuring 
and fostering religious liberty it has led to ecclesiastical despotism and has 
been one of its mainstays, in, not only all ecclesiastical, but likewise in all 
secular governments. As the error which would isolate and divide those 
powers is destructive of unity and continuity, so also the error which would 
transfer either to an outside tribunal is destructive of religious liberty. To 
place one of these three powers of church government into hands other than 
those of the churches, so that its own normal action should be suspended 
and its own proper functions determined by another, would subvert the de- 
velopment of the whole. It is by the union of these several functions of a 
church that the freedom of the churches is established. When the organi- 
zation is imperfect, when, for instance, the legislative power is vested in one 
tribunal, which enacts the laws, the executive authority in another which 
enforces order under it, and the judicial authority vested in another tribunal 
— all separate and distinct — this is a total destruction, of all true ecclesias- 
tical government, as we see it in the Bible. 



108 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

Now, as the Bible does not go into details and does not lay down a rule 
for everything, the churches must naturally have a considerable share in 
supplying rules for their conduct in matters of minor detail, thus supple- 
menting those which they find wanting in the divine record. As no church 
has any authority to enact positive laws,^er se, there must be a resort to 
some other mode of generating rules for their government. The authority 
to do so is derived from the peculiar character and function of a Baptist 
church, so different from what it is actually supposed to be from a cursory 
observation. Such a tribunal does in effect partake, to a great extent, of 
the character of a legislative body. The idea commonly entertained is, that 
it is simply invested with the power of expounding the laws of the gospel, 
which have been ordained by Christ, the legislator ; and this office it does 
undoubtedly perform. But this power of expounding comprehends a great 
deal, as every lawyer knows, and reaches much further than is generally 
imagined. It at once communicates to a church the double character of a 
legislative and judicial tribunal. This is inevitable, and arises from the in- 
herent imperfection which attends all such institutions. It is not in the 
power of any collection of men, formed into a legislative assembly, however 
fertile in resources their understandings may be, to invent a system of ready- 
made rules which shall embrace all, or anything like all, the cases which 
actually occur. Certainly the Bible does not propose to do so in church 
polity. The consequence is that a church, or any other judicial tribunal 
which has been instituted with the avowed design of applying the laws as 
they are made, finds itself engaged in an endless series of disquisitions and 
reasonings, in order to ascertain the precise rule which is applicable to any 
particular case. The innumerable questions coming before a church for set- 
tlement are perpetually giving a new form to private controversies, and pre- 
sent new views and new questions to the examination of the churches. 
However full and however minute the code of laws may be in its provisions, 
a vast field is still left open for the exercise of the reasoning powers and the 
Bound discrimination of those who are to sit in judgment in ecclesiastical 
matters. 

It is not a reproach to, or a defect in. Baptist church government, that 
this should be so ; it is merely a curious and interesting fact in the history 
of Baptist church jurisprudence, that the exigencies of the churches, the 
ever-varying forms into which the transactions of the churches are thrown, 
should ramify to such an endless extent the rules which regulate the conduct 
of individuals. Perhaps it is no more than happens to every other depart- 
ment of knowledge; for every conquest which .science makes, every fresh 
accession it receives, only presents a new vantage ground, whence the mind 
can see further, and take in a wider scope than it did before. But in juris- 
prudence, the experiments which are made are infinitely more numerous 
than in any other science ; and this contributes to modify and extend, to a 
wonderful extent, the rules which have been made, and the principles 
which have already been adjudged. For every question which arises 
in ecclesiastical government, every case which is tried, is a new experi- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 109 

ment which lays the foundation for new views and new analyses, and 
which the finer and more subtle they are, the more they escape from the 
grasp of general principles, and the greater the discretion which is conferred 
upon the churches in applying them to church government. It is sometimes 
supposed that all the principles which are now established, all the rules 
which are declared, are mere deductions from general principles, which had 
been previously settled. But how far back, and by whom, were these prin- 
ciples settled ? Not by any ecclesiastical legislature ; for no such a tribunal 
is known to Bible church government. The greatest genius which had 
devoted itself exclusively to the task, would be incompetent to its per- 
formance. 

Bible church development is a fact, and its laws and conditions may be 
scientifically ascertained and defined. It starts out from definite models 
seen in the apostolic churches, and is developed in its own order and after 
its kind. The development starts from these Scriptural formulas, and in 
these formulas are given the law or principle of the development. From a 
system of free and independent local churches is developed churches of like 
faith and order, never a system of consolidated churches, with one or a few 
men to rule over them. Even in nature every kind generates its kind, never 
another. The germ of the oak is in the acorn, from the acorn is developed 
the oak, never the pine or the hickory. If we see in the Bible economy a 
set of local churches independent one of another, and all being equal in 
power and jurisdiction, each church choosing its own pastor, and administer- 
ing its own ordinances, we must conclude that these cardinal principles are 
grounded in the law of the gospel. No other system is spontaneous, or the 
result alone of the inherent energy or force independent of these formulas. 
One and the same law or principle pervades all these churches, binding 
them together in a unity that copies or imitates the apostolic churches. 
While each church is free and independent, no one is isolated from the rest, 
and are sovereign parts of one stupendous whole, and each depends on the 
whole, and the whole on each, and each on each. In this band of brotherly 
love, all are members of one denomination peculiar to its kind, and members 
one of another. 

When we take into consideration the fact that it was some twelve years 
before any part of the New Testament was written and sixty years before it 
was compiled and became accessible to the churches, we can see what a 
powerful factor customary law and usage became in the formation of church 
jurisprudence. Hence the error in the over-estimation of a written system of 
ecclesiastical polity and the under-estimation of custom and usage. This ap- 
pears with prominence in the Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist and Presby- 
terian systems of government where the origin of ecclesiastical polity is ex- 
plained by the hypothesis of a written constitution ; for this hypothesis 
involves the idea of those people, in the commencement of those churches, 
consciously and deliberately sitting about the construction of a government 
and system of laws suitable to their preconceived ideas of what a church 
government and law ought to be. The influence of this written theory on 



110 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

ecclesiastical thought lingers even to this day, though in a constantly dimin- 
ishing degree as the world becomes better informed upon the subject. At 
present it may be considered as having generally given place to the view so 
plainly taught in the Scriptures, which is, that Christians are by nature 
social beings, and that ecclesiastical government in the beginning was the 
result of social growth as well as of a covenant, and is a necessary condition 
of ecclesiastical existence. Accepting this position we have to consider the 
method and forces of this growth. Among the purely human forces we find 
a covenant and customary law and usage. It is with these elements that 
we have here mainly to deal, and especially to point out the nature and ex- 
tent of their operation in the field of church polity. 

Baptist church customary law and usage may be defined to be an expres- 
sion, comprising all the faculties of the mind which lead to the conseious 
performance of actions that are adaptive in character, but pursued without 
necessary knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the 
ends attained. It works by experience, and is wholly dependent on indi- 
vidual experience for the wisdom of its actions. It belongs to the individual 
member of the church as well as to the collective body, and is improvable 
in the life of the individual by and in the light of the experience of the 
past. Written church constitutions in the beginning of the history of a 
church belong to the present, and hence unimprovable with age and experi- 
ence, and does not become wise by individual experience. It is this that 
makes Baptist church government so stable and unchangable. It is viewed in 
the light of primitive church polity. This habit has grown to be hereditary 
among Baptists. An act frequently performed in the administration of 
church government in the consciousness of a specific purpose may continue 
to be performed even after the consciousness of the purpose of the act has 
been lost. When the mental and habitual bias caused by the frequent and 
continued exercise of the mind in a given direction, has become hereditary, 
as it were, the habit has grown into a customary law or usage of the church. 
The long continuance of Baptists under the apostolic order of church gov- 
ernment engenders the habit of ecclesiastical thought and action which 
ripens into an ecclesiastical custom, and becomes powerful in determining the 
form of Baptist church polity and the direction of church progress without 
the necessity of written formulas. In the very earliest stages of the primi- 
tive churches, among the true adherents to that form of government changes 
-were less frequent than in the later stages, for the reason that opportunity 
was thereby offered for the ideas of social organization peculiar to the primi- 
tive churches and to primitive times to impress .themselves upon the minds 
of the early Christians, and in the course of centuries of ecclesiastical monot- 
ony, to ripen into a firmly fixed church customary law, fixed and immov- 
able. Thus the ecclesiastical instincts, customs and usages of the early Bap- 
tists have their origin in a pre-historic age ; in an age when generation after 
generation passes away, leaving no record of changes in ecclesiastical forms, 
or of the acquisition of new ideas foreign to the principles of the apostolic 
churches. And it is this principle that must be taken account of if we would 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. Ill 

fully understand the later progress of Baptist churclies ; it is in its force and 
persistence that we discern the main cause of that tendency displayed in these 
churches to preserve in their governments the essential features of the primi- 
tive form and order of the apostolic churches. One of the most striking 
results of this influence is to be found in the analogies which may be observed 
between Baptist churches of to-day and the apostolic churches, taken in con- 
nection with the fact that their common features and practices are at the 
same time the characteristic features, the one of the other. The first glimpse 
which we can get of the forms of government of the apostolic churches shows 
them to have been wonderfully like one another, and I defy any man to 
point out any perceivable difference between those early churches and our 
Baptist churches of this age. There is every reason to believe that this form 
of government, in which every man had a place, and every man had an 
equal place and power with every other man in the church, was really one of 
the possessions which we have in common with the primitive Christians in the 
days of the apostles. 

This, then, appears as the type of true apostolic church government. The 
existence of a strong ecclesiastical instinct to adhere to the original forms 
would lead us to expect to find this type perpetuated in the later history of 
the churches, and, in fact, we find that its essential features have been main- 
tained in all respects in our churches of this age. Whenever variations 
from the type have occurred they have been either the result of a more 
complete development, and carrying out the hereditary charter and scheme. 
One of the prominent characteristic features of this typical or primitive 
government, as compared with our Baptist churches, is the co-existence of 
three elements: 1, the independence and sovereignty of each church ; 2, the 
equality of the ministry and the membership ; 3, the assembly of the mem- 
bership thereby constituting a church proper, in which the several individ- 
ual members comprising the church act immediately for themselves, and not 
through representatives. This view is further confirmed by other essential 
similarities between our Baptist churches and that which is pointed out in 
the Scriptures, all of which indicates an inborn force leading it to resist 
aggressions and foreign influences, and seek the realization of its primitive 
ideals. 

In directing attention to the similarity of organization and similarity of 
ecclesiastical development as the result of a system of jurisprudence peculiar 
alone to Baptist churches, it is not intended thereby to overlook the efficacy 
of subordinate forces operating to the same end, as, for instance, the force of 
imitation. It is hard to put an over-estimate upon the influence of imitation 
in the formation of governments, whether they be human or divine. But 
when we have accorded all possible importance to the act of conscious imi- 
tation, there still remains the fact that imitation of ecclesiastical institutions 
takes place mainly between churches and people of the same faith and 
order, and only to a very limited extent between churches of different 
denominations. Roman Catholics may copy their ideas of priestcraft and 
the union of church and state from the old Jewish economy, the Episcopali- 



112 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

ans may copy from tlie Catholics, the Methodists from the Episcopalians, 
and the Presbyterians from all the rest of them, so far as the consolidation 
of their churches for government is concerned, but we do not expect to find 
Baptist churches copying from any one of them, for they never came out of 
them, as those churches at difierent times came out of one another. Imita- 
tion in ecclesiastical matters is a certain inherited propensity, an instinctive 
adaptation to certain forms of thoughts and lines of action ; whence it would 
appear that the influence which imitation exerts in determining ecclesias- 
tical institutions rests on an instinctive faculty, based upon the law of the 
gospel and customary law and usage. Between churches having no com- 
mon inheritance, no oneness of faith and practice, we look in vain for any 
unity, or any lasting similarity of institutions. One church may borrow of 
another, although the two share in no common doctrine or practice, yet the 
borrowed institution or ordinance finds no soil adapted to its normal growth, 
as, for instance, the practice of immersion, and it either passes away or 
becomes unrecognizably distorted. On the other hand, we have ample 
record of doctrines and practices being transplanted from one sister church 
to another that have taken root and developed a strong and natural growth. 
Written church constitutions may vary, according to the whims of those who 
write them, but Baptist church polity remains stable. Humanly devised 
church governments are fickle, turn with every breath of argument ; but 
that which Christ founded is beyond the reach of argument and bears ever 
steadily towards its predetermined goal. Church-making aptness, and a 
proclivity to build up a church after the apostolic models among Baptists 
becomes fixed in the whole denomination, so that it is just as much an her- 
editary custom for them to construct a new church upon certain transmitted 
gospel principles, as it is for bees to build their honeycombs as their remote 
ancestors did. 

Hence we find those so-called churches which formulate written codes, 
furthest away from the primitive models, which have undergone the most 
changes. Every change has been merely experimental, and in most cases 
the ones least like the churches we see in the Bible are those the most 
admired by the great majority of the religious world. But even the most 
careless Baptist will not admit that we as a denomination have yet reached 
our final limit; indeed it appears to the student of the science of eccle- 
siastical government that Baptists have but gained firm footing upon the 
pathway of progress and development, and there lies before them a future 
grander than their fancy has ever dreamed of even in its wildest flights. 
No doubt that so far as the social, missionary, and educational features of 
our churches are concerned, the idea of constant advance is firmly fixed in 
the Baptist mind, the masses realize the necessity of constant change, if 
necessary, of a continual re-adaptation of means and systems to ever vary- 
ing conditions and desired ends. But it is quite difierent when it comes to 
the governmental polity of the churches. There never has been, nor can 
there be the slightest change in those forms which were fixed by the apostles. 
There may be a contest between custom, the institutions of our forefathers. 



I 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 113 

and progression, but progression must give way; Baptist churcli custom 
stands still, progress never rests ; custom preserves all the ancient landmarks 
and doctrines of the churches, while progress, which is but another name 
for church precedents, endeavors to annihilate them and replace them with 
things human, which have never been tried. 

Each church having exclusive and supreme power to govern itself 
according to its own interpretation of the Scriptures, the result is that each 
church has not only its own code of Scriptural law taken alone from the 
Bible, but also its peculiar customs, usages and church decisions, forming 
a system of church common law varying, in some particulars, from that 
of every other church. Each church has borrowed, more or less, from 
the customs and usages of other churches, so that the laws of the sev- 
eral churches have been constantly expanding in a state of develop- 
ment, and generally improving, and assimilating more and more to the 
principles of the universal law of the Gospel. This system has, there- 
fore, worked well in practice, as a general rule each church working in 
harmony with its sister churches, all, in the main, administering the same 
common law. Each separate church has assisted in interpreting and exe- 
cuting the laws of the Gospel, great numbers of decisions and rulings have 
been made and opinions given by our churches and leading churchmen, to 
give interpretations to the laws and aid in executing them, under which 
usages and systems of practice have grown up, become established customs 
and assumed the force of laws, and now form what may be properly termed 
the Common law of the Gospel. It cannot be denied, therefore, that Baptist 
churches have a growing common law upon all inter-church subjects and 
questions to take the place of ecclesiastical legislation that figures so exten- 
sively in all other systems. 

Clearly, then, from the standpoint of the common law of the Gospel, it is 
visionary to hope that a written code of ecclesiastical law can be originated, 
which might forthwith replace the great fabric of customary law and usage 
directly based on considerations of experience, msdom and utility. A self- 
made system of ecclesiastical ethics cannot all at once and presently be 
rightly thought out, even by the select few, — the most learned — and I am 
sure it is quite beyond the mental reach of the many. In this respect Bap- 
tists have been exceedingly fortunate. The value of the inherited and 
theologically-enforced system of church law is that it formulates with some, 
— yea, a close approach to Gospel truth, the accumulated results of past 
human experience. It has not arisen through the impulse of the moment — 
not irrationally, but ethically, through the wonderful influence of ancient 
usage and custom. It is true that sometimes bodies of Baptists — even whole 
churches — have eventually gone right and been reclaimed after trying aU 
possible ways of going wrong. Those who have gone wrong have been 
habitually checked by disaster and disappointment ; and the true disciples 
have been Providentially prospered and continued because not thus checked. 
Without seeming so, the development of the true system of Gospel church 
polity and the true faith of the Gospel have been continuous from the begin- 
8 



114 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

ning ; and its nature when a germ — when first planted by the apostles — was 
the same as is its nature when fully developed. The apostles, with prophetic 
vision, saw the end to which it would drift ; Christ knew and saw it when 
he said. The gates of hell should not prevail against it. Hence the code of 
conduct suitable for the church of Christ, embodying, as it does, discoveries 
slowly and almost unconsciously made through a long series of generations, is 
the divine code, and has transcendent authority on its side. It is peculiarly 
Scriptural and Baptistic 

A standing ecclesiastical legislative body, such as we see now extant in 
the world, is a thing never once mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. Any 
such legislature at all, any constantly acting mechanism for enacting and 
repealing church laws, is, though it seems to some so natural, quite contrary 
to the letter and spirit of the Scriptures. Baptists conceive of their law as 
something divinely given, and therefore unalterable, or as a fundamental 
habit, inherited from the past to be transmitted to the future. From the 
standpoint of government our churches are preservative bodies and not 
creative. In its development we strive that the new government shall be 
in the old-fashion; it must not be an alteration, but shall contain as little of 
variety as possible. The imitative system of government tends to this, 
because Baptists most easily imitate what their minds are best prepared for, 
what is like the old churches, yet with the inevitable minimum of alteration ; 
what throws them least out of the old path, and puzzles least their minds. 
In all changes they like the new practices which are most preservative of old 
formulas, keeping what is old and tried rather than supplanting it with 
the new. The ancient customs of the churches, the landmarks, the aborigi- 
nal transmitted law, the law which was in the breast of the early Christians 
and written upon the tablets of their hearts could not and must not be 
altered. The use to which Baptists put church government is not to alter 
the law of God, but to prevent the law from being altered. Our system 
covets fixity: That the law of God should be known and read of all men, it 
should be left without authoritatively written interpretations, that this sacred 
text and God's church polity arising out of it should be kept in a sure and 
calculable tract, is the summum bonum of every intelligent Baptist in the 
world, and the first desire of every loyal lover of the Lord. The love of 
the novel is so powerful, the social bond so weak among men, that the august 
spectacle of an unalterable church polity is necessary to preserve pure Chris- 
tianity. Among Baptists all change is thought to be an evil. The practice 
and mode of worship in our churches are so simple and so unvarying that 
any decent sort of rules sufiice, so long as men know what they are. Baptist 
church customary law is the first check upon unscriptural innovation; 
that fixed routine of ecclesiastical life at which modern church innovations 
chafe, and by which modern improvement for the worse is impeded, is the 
primitive check upon unbridled license. A rigid adherence to the fixed 
mould of transmitted apostolic church government is essential to an unmarred 
and unbroken church life. 

In every kind of church government there should be such a system of 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 115 

laws, which it is not lawful for any member to disobey; there is then a diffi- 
culty, which, if it be not remedied, makes it unlawful for a man to put himself 
under the absolute dominion of any kind of church government where man 
or an assembly of men have a right to make the laws for the government 
of the churches. Baptists have amongst them the word of God alone for 
the rule of their actions. Now if we subject ourselves to men also, obliging 
ourselves to such laws as shall be by them commanded, when the commands 
of God and man shall differ, we are to obey God rather than man ; and, 
therefore, the covenant of general obedience to man is unlawful. There is 
no such dilemma amongst Baptists ; for their ecclesiastical law alone emanates 
from God, the interpretation whereof belongs to the churches. Nor was this 
controversy taken notice of amongst the early Christians, for iimongst them 
their ecclesiastical laws were those promulgated by the apostles who had 
authority to make them. This difficulty therefore remains amongst and 
troubles those sects who feel that the Bible is not a complete rule of action, 
to whom it is allowed to fabricate a code of written rules, and to take for 
the sense of the Scriptures that which they make in the shape of written 
laws made by their councils and general assemblies, by their own private 
interpretation. Whereas, Baptists have ever taught that no human law in 
divine matters is intended to oblige the conscience of a man, unless it ema- 
nate from God. Nor did the apostles themselves, convened in the capacity 
of a college of bishops and law-makers, ever pretend dominion over the 
churches or over men's consciences. Take away the Bible from all other 
systems, still they would have their traditions, their decrees of councils, con- 
fessions of faith, together with the laws made by their general conferences 
and assemblies to guide and control them, which they prize more highly. But 
deprive the Baptists of the Bible and they are left without a law, without a 
constitution, without a rule and without a guide. Indeed, they would be 
blotted out of existence. Hence the importance of the word of God in the 
Bible plan of church government. 

The general influence of a system of church polity thus evolved is con- 
servative in a double sense. In several ways it maintains and strengthens 
church government, and so conserves the social aggregate — the church ; and 
it does this in a large measure by conserving beliefs, sentiments and usages, 
which, being evolved during the earlier stages of the churches, are shown 
by their survival to have had an approximate fitness to the requirements of 
the churches, and are likely still to have it in a great measure as they grow 
older. Conservatism has ever been the crowning virtue of Baptist church 
government. It is the most valuable influence in any institution, whether 
human or divine. But to have its due effect upon church government, it 
must be endowed with a healthy and vigorous life, with a growth, which, if 
slow, must be firm and preservative against Scriptural innovation as well 
as decay ; nevertheless, it must adapt its vigor and support to such new and 
improved conditions as experience and necessity may engraft upon the old 
stock, as well as cast away the useless, the injurious and unscriptural. Thus 
continually important changes and modifications of the unwritten laws are 



116 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

taking place for the betterment of the churches ; but they are not intro- 
duced by ^vay of conscious legislation, but by the decisions of the churches 
either professing to interpret pre-existing rules of conduct, but really modi- 
fying them in order to adapt them to new circumstances, or overruling them 
in conformity to a higher law, that of the Scriptures, as apprehended by the 
conscience of an enlightened and equitable denomination. 

Hence the Bible rules are comparatively few, while the books upon Bap- 
tist church jurisprudence, if the whole field were covered, might be im- 
mensely voluminous. If it were lawful and possible to reduce these rules to 
writing in the form of legislative enactments, it would be an endless task. I 
have before me a large volume, styled " The Presbyterian Digest of 1886. 
A compend of the acts and deliverances of the General Assembly of the 
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America ; compiled by the 
order of the authority of the General Assembly." This book contains 876 
pages of closely primed matter, and is a monument to the folly of a people 
who think that it is both lawful and possible to legislate for the Lord by 
reducing their laws to written rules. The human mind is able to invent 
very little. Its true employment consists in the observation and analysis of 
phenomena, after, and not before, they have been developed, and then in 
binding them together into general rules. And this process of development, 
in the case of church jurisprudence, is constantly going on, after, as well as 
before, the ecclesiastical legislature have passed the most comprehensive 
laws; the functions of the church, do what we will, or turn the question in 
whatever aspect we please, are compelled to bear a very close analogy with 
those of the law-making power. If all the rules, which are now declared by 
Baptist churches, are mere corollaries from the Scriptures, or from previous 
adjudications, the same might have been said one or two hundred years ago, 
and then what is the meaning of that vast accumulation of experience and 
learning which then exercised, and still continues to exercise, the churches? 

Therefore, Baptist church jurisprudence, in its true sense, is where a few 
elementary Scripture truths being given, the whole subordinate mass of 
principles may be readily evolved from them. Yet this cannot be the case 
with a written system of church laws, which deals with abstract propositions 
simply. True church polity deals with a state of facts, where the question 
is perpetually recurring — What does human experience prove to be the 
wisest rule which can be adopted ? or what does it prove to be the wisest 
construction of a rule already in existence ? 

We come now to consider more specifically that peculiar kind of law 
which takes the place of ecclesiastical legislation in other religious com- 
munities, and how it is generated in the bosom of free and independent 
Baptist churches, and grows up to become, in itself, an unwritten code, 
sufficiently well understood to serve all the purposes of a written system of 
laws. The origin and progress of Baptist church customary law is in itself 
a remarkable step in the march which Baptists have made in the upbuilding 
of this powerful denomination. Baptist churches now begin to understand and 
acknowledge their subjection to church, and inter-church, laws in conformity 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 117 

with the Scriptures, with justice and enlightened reason, as in the origin 
of society individuals acknowledge themselves bound by the laws of etiquette 
and honor. It is to be hoped, and we really believe, that we are only in the 
morning twilight of this development, and that it will proceed amongst the 
Baptist churches of the earth until all can see its beauty and its utility. 
The great desideratum is a well-understood unwritten code of laws adopted 
by the Baptist denomination and to be enforced by their combined consent 
in the last resort. 

How it is that so large and so powerful a Christian community as that of 
the Baptists scattered over the world can live together without ecclesiastical 
bonds to bind them together, and without a written system of laws, other 
than those of the Bible, is the wonder of wonders. 

It is certain that in the infancy of the world no sort of a legislature, not 
even a distinct author of law, is conceived of. So in the infancy of the 
apostolic churches there was a time when the only statement of right and 
wrong was the action or sentence of the church after the facts of the case 
had happened ; not one pre-supposing a written ecclesiastical law that had 
been violated, but one which is breathed for the first time by the church at 
the moment of adjudication. 

When a group of facts come before a Baptist church of to-day for settle- 
ment the whole course of the discussion assumes that no question is, or can 
be raised which will call for the application of any principles but old ones, 
or of any distinctions but such as have long since been recognized by the 
churches. It is taken for granted that there is somewhere a known Scrip- 
ture rule, or else a customary law which will decide the case ; and if such a 
rule is not discovered it is only because the necessary patience and knowl- 
edge is not forthcoming to detect it. 

Not so with the primitive churches. Long practice had not developed a 
system of usages such as we now have, neither had they in the outset a 
compilation of the New Testament Scriptures, and must need feel their 
way cautiously. If the Scriptures were a declaration of the fundamental 
forms which they were bound to follow in setting the churches in action, 
church common or customary law signified the discovery of the Scripture 
rules that ought to guide them according to the tenor and spirit of the 
Scriptures, wnth regard to the matters not specified, but which nevertheless 
belong to its province. The Scriptures were the necessary basis of the sys- 
tem. There being no written rules, however, laid down, the only question 
which could legitimately present itself was to ascertain what disposition 
should be made of the given case in the light of the Scriptures ; also what 
Christ or his apostles would have enacted had they undertaken to carry out 
the law in detail ; in other words, what was right and just in reference to the 
matter in question ; it not being supposed that Christ or his apostles would 
have ordained otherwise in any given case. The church having duly con- 
sidered all the circumstances, viewing it from the standpoint of the Scrip- 
tures, of reason and custom, its decision became a matter of as much import- 
ance as if it had been previously determined by a written law. 



118 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

If a question arose and was left by tlie Scriptures wholly unprovided for, 
it was governed wholly by reason and customary law ; if in part, only then 
partly by customary law, and partly by the Scriptures. In the eighteenth 
chapter of Matthew, for example, an explicit rule is recorded for the govern- 
ment of the church in private offences, but they were left to establish a cus- 
tomary rule for the handling of public offences. Thus we see that Baptist 
church usage and customary law is the complement of the Scriptures — that 
is to say, it is literally filling it out in all its fulness. It follows then that 
customary law must of necessity be more or less extensive when the Scrip- 
tures go furthest into detail. It supplies all the Scriptures leave unprovided 
for, and thus develops principles which take the place of ecclesiastical legis- 
lation, and w^hich serve as rules of action for cases subsequently arising. The 
moment a correct principle was evolved, they, as it were, unconsciously and 
unavoidably habituated themselves to its adoption. 

It was one of the most efficient agencies in the development of true Bap- 
tist church jurisprudence, that certain general principles being thus estab- 
lished, the churches should be left to unfold themselves gradually, and be 
expanded, modified and limited by the spiritual action of the churches them- 
selves in their practical intercourse and interchange of opinions. And unless 
these principles had been left to develop themselves in accordance with the 
laws of their own peculiar nature, without coercion from without, there was 
certain to be more or less of either restraint or distortion. Church law, 
conformable to the law of God, is such as is freely formed in the hearts and 
understanding of those alone whose duty it is to execute it, and if it is 
allowed to abide in the heart, and understanding, to be called forth for exer- 
cise, when an actual necessity arises for its use, there can be no restraint det- 
rimental to true ecclesiastical development. All the God-given faculties of 
the Christianized human being should be left to work and bear fruit freely, 
and not be deprived of the liberty wherewith God has made us free, and 
constrained to expand in ways and shapes determined upon beforehand, and 
forced to receive the convictions of others. 

It may be laid down as an ascertained fact that in the primitive times of 
the churches, denominational necessities and progressive religious opinion 
were more or less in advance of customary law, thus far matured and devel- 
oped. Those early disciples and church members might have thought that 
they had often come indefinitely near to the closing of the gap between the 
principles thus far developed and the necessities of the churches in their on- 
ward and upward march, but the gap had a perpetual tendency to reopen. 
The Scripture rules and customary laws were stable ; the churches not yet 
having fully developed themselves to the highest point of perfection, were pro- 
gressive, and new usages sprang up to fill the breach between the two. The 
greater or less prosperity and true development of the churches depended on 
the degree of promptness with which this gulf was narrowed. Had they ceased 
their energies, their efforts and their perpetual reachings out after new and 
greater developments and enterprises, their customary laws would have over- 
taken their tardy march, and stagnation would have been the inevitable result. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 119 

It must be borne in mind that it is only with spiritually progressive bodies 
that true church jurisprudence has any affinity. The principles governing 
the early churches, in the absence of specific Scripture rules, were necessarily 
elastic. Had they not been they would have been exposed to some especial 
dangers absolutely fatal to their progress. They were such as were best 
suited to promote their external and internal well-being at the time of their 
adoption ; these usages having been tenaciously retained in all their integ- 
rity until new developments taught them new practices, their progress was 
certain. Had they maintained, thus early, that no principles were to be 
sought after or advanced except such as had thus far been developed, their 
existence would have degenerated into the most disastrous and withering of 
all institutions — that of caste — something stagnant and stationary. 

It is impossible to say at what time in the history of the apostolic churches 
that this peculiar kind of unwritten law reached the footing of pure customs. 
When any practice in its nature and origin was found to be in strict accord- 
ance with justice and reason, and in strict harmony with the letter and spirit 
of the Scriptures, and found to be in all particulars convenient and benefi- 
cial, it was naturally remembered, repeated and continued from time to 
time, from age to age, and thus grew into a church custom, either special or 
general. And certainly the body of the system did not become complete 
until the various points and principles of church polity came up to be 
decided, and they became numerous enough to furnish a basis for a system 
of church law, broad enough to meet the various wants of the churches, after 
a full and complete development. Certainly not until there gradually came 
into existence a complete, coherent and systematical body of customary law 
and usage of an amplitude sufficient to furnish principles which would apply 
to any conceivable combination of circumstances which might come before 
the churches for settlement. 

From what has been said Baptist church jurisprudence may be defined to 
be those principles and practices which have obtained the force of laws by 
being uniformly and perpetually acted upon by the churches. Immemorial 
usage is the evidence of the custom. It is called a law because it is the 
common conviction, and is termed customary law, inasmuch as its existence 
is known by its usual recognition, and customary practice in all the churches 
alike. It is unlike all other systems of church law, in that it comes down 
from the apostolic churches, and does not require for its express or tacit 
consent the will of the ecclesiastical legislator. 

Who can tell into what net of absurd principles we should find ourselves 
entangled if the sages of the second or third, or even those of the eighteenth, 
centuries could have decided our probable cases in advance for us, laying 
down written principles to shape our form of church government? We cer- 
tainly owe it to our successors not to deprive them of the same freedom we 
enjoy. If, in the multifarious affairs of the Baptist churches of to-day, a 
question yet remains undecided, let it remain so until it is asked in a man- 
ner to prove that it needs deciding. The reason why Baptist church juris- 
prudence and government are so stable and uniform, is because each principle 



120 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

has repeatedly come before the churches as a practical question, and because 
the churches have refused to commit the law, in advance, to a particular 
view, merely for the sake of rounding out a theory. Those who have not 
taken the pains to study the beauty of our polity regret this, and consider 
the ever-rough and seemingly unfinished outlines of it to be a defect, but to 
Baptists it seems inseparably connected with its merit, as the only purely 
divine system of ecclesiastical jurisprudence now extant in the world. The 
peculiar people who launched this system out upon its career, and kept it 
pure and undefiled, have, by the help of a genuine and a burning love for 
the truth, once delivered to the saints, and by the force of their steadfast 
wills, stamped themselves ineffaceably upon the history of the religious world. 
Wherefore this divine law which pertains to the doctrine, as well as the 
practice, of the churches is inherent in the human mind, to distinguish the 
good from the base, the gold from the dross. In this law the Baptists find 
the common tie that binds them together, and converts the churches into 
one denomination, not by bands of steel, but by love and fellowship, of 
which the head in spiritual matters is Christ alone. 

We find that Christ, in not laying down specifically the minutia of the 
rules for the government of liia churches, left his followers in time to com- 
bine and elucidate them, and gave them the patience to wait and see how 
these unwritten rules arise in time and places suitable for them, and how 
others wait to spring forth in their time, which constitutes all the beauty of 
order. There is nothing more apparent to him, who takes the time and 
patience to contemplate this system of church government, than that it has 
certain divine proofs which confirm and demonstrate it. These proofs will 
appear luminous and distinct, if we reflect with what facihty and on what 
occasions events arise which from the most remote distances, and contrary to 
all human foresight, take their assigned places, and have ever since served 
as landmarks to guide those who follow after. 

While other systems of church government have been built up by the aid 
of ecclesiastical legislation, ours, of itself, creates a world of greatness in 
constructing itself with its own elements. This system being once estab- 
lished and set on foot by the early disciples, the progress of the churches 
could not be difierent from that which they have been in reality. It will at 
the same time describe an ideal perfect history, in which all churches will 
march with equal step during their progress and development. 

The paucity of the New Testament in furnishing rules for the internal 
workings of the churches has been felt by all who have written upon this 
subject. Rev. D C. Haynes in his excellent work entitled, " The Baptist 
Denomination," after speaking of the organization of Baptist churches, says, 
"This is a simple but natural state of things, not adverse to the New Testa- 
ment, but in harmony with it, as far as can be gathered from its pages, so 
silent upon the method in which the primitive churches came into being, 
and entirely without laws for the constitution of future churches." 

Baptists in the outset found themselves in about the same attitude that the 
founders of our American government would have found themselves had 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 121 

they been presented with our present constitution, as the frame-work of the 
government with a clause in it, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, 
that it should not be changed, or added to, and that there should be no 
legislation under it, either state or federal, further defining how the govern- 
ment should be administered. Yet no close student of the history of the 
primitive governments of the world, and especially of jurisprudence itself, 
as lawyers understand it, could deny that a most excellent system of gov- 
ernment, both state and federal, could and would have been founded upon 
our Constitution, without the intervention of legislation, in all essential fea- 
ures similar to the fabric we now see erected upon it. 

The English constitution is in the main an unwritten instrument. The 
fundamental principles of that government started at a time when society 
was in the germ, as were its laws. At this stage the system of English laws 
was simply composed of modes of dealing and rules of conduct, suggested by 
conveniences, established by usage and observed by the people, while yet 
there was scarcely any governmental agency to enforce them. Likewise in 
the primitive condition of the churches they had of necessity within them- 
selves the causes of the growth, and the materials for the nourishment, of 
those principles not provided for in the Scripture economy without the help 
of ecclesiastical legislation. 

Those who have undertaken to establish a written code of ecclesiastical 
laws are confronted with many dangers. The first and most important is 
errors in definitions. There is danger of perpetuity being given those errors 
by the legislative enactment, so as to preclude their correction upon discov- 
ery, as under our present system of church government. In ecclesiastical 
legislation there is also the danger of cramping the development of the 
scientific principles of customary law, and retarding the adoption of advanced 
rules more consistent with the genius of primitive church government. Be- 
sides it is impossible to codify the laws of a church in such a manner as that 
no change will be necessary. The notions of dififerent classes, or factions, 
are continually changing, and the narrowness of human wisdom cannot fore- 
see the cases and principles which time discovers. It is impossible to calcu- 
late in advance what experience can in time reveal. A book of discipline, 
however complete it may be, is no sooner finished than a thousand unex- 
pected questions present themselves to those who are to apply them in prac- 
tice. Ecclesiastical laws once digested and reduced to written form remain 
as they have been written ; while a system of customary laws, such as we see 
exemplified in Baptist church government, never stops, and produce at each 
stage of their development new combinations, new facts and new results. 
No churches having any authority to write and promulgate a system of laws 
are necessarily abandoned to the empire of custom and usage, to the dis- 
cussion of learned men in church law, and to the arbitrament of the churches. 
The Bible only serves to fix, with enlarged views, the general formulas, and 
not to descend into the details of the questions which may arise upon each 
matter. It is for each church imbued with the spirit of the law of the gospel 
to direct the application of these customary laws as they arise. 



122 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

Hence among Baptist churches, in addition to whatever of Bible princi- 
ples there are found to be laid down, there is fouud a store of landmarks, 
maxims, axioms, decisions and usages to be resorted to in every conceivable 
matter of practice coming before the churches for adjudication. If Baptist, 
are to be condemned to reproach because they have no ecclesiastical code, 
there are others who merit condemnation, because they, without warrant of 
Scripture, have multiplied written laws upon laws and by this means, and 
this alone, departed from the Scripture models. Certainly Baptists ought 
not to be charged with ignorance in commentary, discussion and authorship 
upon the subject of church government, and ought not to refrain from 
engaging therein for fear of erecting false standards in a dissertation of this 
nature. 

It would be without doubt desirable had it been the will of Christ, the 
founder of the churches, that all matters relating to the government of his 
churches had been regulated by minute laws. But in default of a precise 
text on each matter, ancient usage, a constant and well-established current 
of uniform decisions, or if you please, an opinion, or received landmark, 
holds the place of Baptist church law. Baptists have always doubted the 
propriety of, and religiously refrained from, legalizing the precepts of the 
Bible, or their customs, by reducing them to a written discipline or. code; 
believing that the moment they do so they fix their peculiar character. 
The superiority of this system of church law is in its flexibility, and that it 
adapts itself to all the circumstances of the matter to which it is applied. 

Custom may not be so wise as a written law, but it is more popular. All 
these qualities are lost the moment you crystallize a custom into legislation. 
They array upon their side alike the convictions and the prejudices of men. 
They are spontaneous. Church members love to deal with, apply, and 
administer them because they have grown out of their own necessities, and 
are of their own invention and in part of their own handiwork. As cir- 
cumstances change and alter, and die off, the custom falls into disuse, and 
we thereby get rid of it. But if you make it into a law, circumstances 
alter, but the law remains, and becomes part of the written law which haunts 
our minute books, and becomes the shell, as it were, out of which the spirit 
of true church law has passed. The usual course has been to find customs 
creeping into our churches through the administration of church affairs, as 
they are wont to eliminate themselves when they become obsolete. As soon 
as the churches lose their unbounded capability of throwing off obsolete 
customs, its carelessness about what it throws away, and their readiness in 
always supplying instantaneously new wants, its spiritual life is changed 
into a merely artificial existence. This disposition, however, to change 
applies to the voluntary usages of the churches, and not to those which are 
immutable and fundamental in their nature, as we will see in its proper 
place. The landmarks of the churches never change, besides saith the law. 
Cursed is he that removeth the landmark. Remove not the landmark which 
the fathers have set. 

it might be asked, what would have been the consequences had errors 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 123 

crept into those early principles ? It is very easy to imagine cases -wbicli 
might have been and were doubtless decided not in strict accordance with 
the true genius of Baptist church law and the Scriptures. The early Chris- 
tians were fallible like those of this day, and as liable to err. Had errors 
been planted in the system, those who introduced them might not have 
intended to have them corrected, and doubtless withstood all effort so to do, 
but when they were in the course of time corrected and conformed to true 
principles, they themselves could not perceive the gradual corrective devel- 
opments. Errors could have been and were eliminated in the same manner, 
and with the same facility, they were introduced. Neither were they able 
to see the wide diffusion of those fundamental principles, and the efficacy 
with which customary law performed its two-fold office — that of eliminating 
errors and incongruities, and at the same time of establishing the system 
upon correct principles, and really concealing the manner in which it was 
done. They soon became accustomed to the modification, extension and 
improvement of church law, by a machinery which in theory and in fact 
was incapable in its very nature of altering one jot or line of the Scriptures. 

Hence we see that in this system the Scriptures are the first of laws, and 
it governs the churches in matters of polity as it does each member of the 
church in matters of faith and practice ; and as it is the first of laws, it cannot 
be modified by a law, and it is, therefore, proper that the churches should 
obey it in preference to any man-made law, and make it the ground of their 
decisions. The members of such a church are called Baptists, and their 
church attributes are three: First, religious liberty, that is, the power of 
not obeying any law except that which the members have themselves 
generated and to which they have consented. Second, religious equity, 
which consists in not acknowdedging any other superior in power except 
those of the body who have a right of imposing the law. Third, ecclesias- 
tical independence, which consists in owing obedience only to one's own 
church, and not be subservient to the will of another. 

Further illustrating the principle that Baptist churches are authorized to 
resort to customs and usages in their government, in matters indifierent, 
which are not commanded in the Scriptures, the same can be made evident 
by perpetual experience and the natural necessity of things. For ecclesi- 
astical laws are intended to regulate human actions in those matters in 
which there are infinite particulars, and are to be conducted by the rules of 
common sense and by analogy to the laws laid down in the Scriptures. If 
there be a law, it is well to follow it ; if there be not for everything such a 
law, their own needs will become their law^-giver, and force them to do it 
without a law. Whether a candidate for baptism be immersed in a bap- 
tistry or in a river ; the church celebrate the communion once or twice a 
month ; whether with fermented or unfermented wine ; whether leaven or 
unleavened bread shall be used ; whether every church shall have one or more 
deacons; whether the pastor shall be chosen for a long or short pastorate; 
what can the Scriptures have to do with anything like these, or anything of 
like nature and indifierency ? 



124 A TBEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

For in the Scriptures all things are indulged to the churches' use and 
liberty, and they so remain until God, by a supervening law has made 
restraints, in some instances, to become matters of obedience to him, and of 
order and usefulness to the churches ; but where the law does not restrain 
the churches are as free as the elements, and may move as freely as the 
winds across the ocean. 

In proportion as the written laws of any church are multiplied the law is 
loaded with decrees that sometimes contradict one another, either because 
succeeding church legislatures are of a different way of thinking ; or because 
the same matters are sometimes well, and at other times ill, defended ; or 
by reason of the infinite number of abuses that slip into whatever passes 
through the hands of men. This is a necessary evil in that system of gov- 
ernment which the ecclesiastical legislator attempts to redress, but in so 
doing the laws are multiplied and varied beyond number, and thereby con- 
fusion becomes worse confounded, while in the Baptist church government 
there can be no comphcation of laws. The supremacy of the law of the 
Gospel is a peculiar guarrantee of the stability of ecclesiastical government. 
This guarantee of the supremacy of the Scriptures leads to a principle, 
which,. so far as I know, it has never been attempted to transplant from 
Baptist soil, and which has been in our system of ecclesiastical government 
the natural production of a thorough government of law, as distinguished 
from a government of church officials. Where the law rules there is sta- 
bility and certainty. It is so natural to Baptists that few think of it as 
essentially important to stability and certainty, and it is of such vital 
importance that none who have studied the nature of other systems can 
help recognizing it as an indispensable element of Scriptural perfection. 
The universal form of church government, or the consolidated form, does 
not permit so great a simplicity of laws. For in the consolidated form there 
must be various courts of judicature ; these must give their decisions ; these 
decisions must be preserved and learned, that they may judge in the same 
manner to-day as yesterday. And in proportion as the decisions of these 
courts of judicature are multiplied the law is loaded with decrees and ren- 
ditions that sometimes contradict one another, either because succeeding 
bodies are of a different way of thinking, or because the same kind of causes 
are sometimes well, and at other times ill, defended ; or, in other words, by 
reason of the infinite number of abuses that slip into whatever passes 
through the hands of men. But in Baptist church government, where every 
case stands upon its merits, there can be but little complication of laws. 

There is an infinite difference between law and custom ; indeed there is 
nothing that is an inflexible law to Baptist churches but what Christ has 
bound upon them, and recorded in Scripture, and everything else that is 
analogous thereto is permitted which is not by the law restrained. Liberty 
is before restraint, and until the fetters are put upon the churches, we are 
under no law and no necessity but what is Scriptural. But if there can be 
any natural necessities we cannot choose but obey them, and for these there 
need be no written law or warrant from either the Scripture or from man. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 125 

Our love for the church and her needs are sufficient to cause us to choose 
to do that which is for her preservation ; experience is a competent warrant 
and instruction to conduct the churches' affairs of liberty and common life. 
When experience and practice are sufficient, Christ does not interpose, and 
unless these be defective, or violently abused, we cannot need written laws 
of self-preservation, for that is the sanction and bond of all ecclesiastical 
laws. 

Indeed it was first the need of the churches that introduced customs, for 
no law but necessity and common sense taught the first ages of the churches 
to meet under the general charter which Christ had given them, and organ- 
ize themselves into independent churches, to make covenants and customs, 
and to establish independence and equality among them, and since written 
laws were not the first to introduce these great transactions, it is certain 
they need them not now, after their thorough and more perfect organization. 
And if nothing were to be done but what we have Scripture for, either 
commending or condemning it, in the language of John, the evangelist, 
Tlie ivorld could not hold the hooks which should be uritten; a Methodist 
discipline, a dozen volumes of pontifical bulls, canons and decretals, and 
numberless Presbyterian overtures and deliverances, would not be sufficient 
to contain the laws. The result would be that if we must not do anything 
without the express warrant of Scripture, or a man-made law, we would, in 
many things, be left without a rule ; because we have from the Scriptures 
sufficient instruction that we should not be so foolish as to require a warrant 
f )r such customs in which we are, by our common sense, completely in- 
structed or else left at perfect liberty. 

Paul, speaking of things wherein he was left at liberty, says ; All things 
are lawful for me; he speaks of meats and drinks, concerning which he 
means, because there is no law, and if there had been one under Moses, it 
was taken away by Christ, and now there was no law forbidding it. And 
again when Paul said : This speak I, not the Lord; that is, he acted accord- 
ing to his own liberty, and not according to the word of the Lord. And 
when the apostle said : And why of yourselves do ye not judge what is right f 
he meant, that to our own reason and judgment many things are permitted 
which are not couched in laws, or expressed declarations from God. So a 
church can become a law unto itself, by covenants and voluntary engage- 
ments, and opinions. It follows then that in those things which have in* them 
nothing but an incidental necessity we are permitted to do as we please. 
As they are in their own nature indifferent, they may be also in their use 
and exercise. But if there be anything in church government which cannot 
be conformed to these measures, and yet cannot be dispensed with, it would 
be a kind of madness to keep still, because we have no command or author- 
ity to do the act which the Scripture has never made unlawful, and yet is by 
analogy deducible from the Scriptures. 

Those who are not of us allege that inasmuch as Baptists have no written 
code of procedure, they have no laws at all. Whereas, we have as much 
right to the use of laws as they have, except we have a different way of 



126 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

evolving tliem. The church, being the supreme and only authoritative inters 
preter of its own polity, has power over such customs as it has authority to 
make ; that which gave them being has authority to change or to abolish 
them. The power that creates can change ; as when God had established 
the laws of Moses it was in his power to give the world a new law and a 
better one in Jesus Christ, and to establish a new way of executing it. For 
in Moses' law the rites and ceremonies were endless, troublesome and imper- 
fect, some of them being useless, and by shadows only pointed to the sub- 
stance to be revealed afterwards. It was the best law which that people and 
the state of things could bear ; but it was for a time, and a limited purpose, 
and the nature of the law required that a better should follow, and therefore 
he that came and gave a better was not to be rejected because he disannulled 
the whole and established a new. 

The pattern, extent and purpose of the new law was entirely different. 
The old was wholly written and painfully minute. It was largely temporal 
and related to this life ; it blended the secular with the divine, the state with 
the church. It was a law without which many ages of the world did live, 
and only bound that one people. Had it been fit to be universal it would 
have lasted always and been irrevocable. It was a covenant of works, and 
bound to exact obedience, and because no man could perform it, a change 
was necessary and expected. The change was foretold by the Prophet Jere- 
miah : I will make a new covenant with you in those days, and in your minds 
I will write it. He did not say that in a book of discipline he would write 
it, but upon the tablets of their hearts would he write the law under the new 
dispensation. 

It is verily believed that the Baptists of the earth are the peculiar people 
to whom has been committed the keeping of this unwritten law of the 
churches of Christ. Indeed the most distinctive difference between Baptists 
and others, and the one that is most far-reaching in its effects, is the manner 
of establishing the laws for the government of the churches. As has been 
shown Baptists have a law for every conceivable feature appertaining to 
church government, yet at no time in the history of the church has a written 
code of laws, aside from the Bible, ever been authoritatively prepared for the 
use of the churches. And doubtless the prophetic declaration that God 
would make a new covenant, and write his laws in the hearts of his people, 
refers, it is verily believed, to this great body of Christians, one of the most 
peculiar features of whose existence is that their laws and customs have ever 
been unwritten and are retained only in their minds and hearts. Baptist 
church jurisprudence teaches that it is vain to attempt to make laws which 
the Scriptures have already made, because we are already commanded to 
do that which is there prescribed, and nothing remains but to execute them. 
Yet in all things where the Scriptures have not provided any law, but left 
it to the careful discretion of the churches, wo are to search how the 
churches in these cases may be well directed to make that provision, by a 
system of common law, which is most convenient and suitable, and at the 
same time not to infringe upon the word of God ; for it is written : Ye 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 127 

shall put nothing into the word which I commanded you, neither shall ye take 
aught therefrom J that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God 
which I coMinanded you. 

Possibly nothing has contributed so much to corrupt other systems of 
church government as the habitual blending of matters of polity with doc- 
trine, and then arbitrarily imposing them upon the churches. All volun- 
tary or customary laws must be unwritten and imposed so as to leave our 
liberty unharmed ; that is, it must not, nor can it be all at once universal, 
and be adopted with intent to bind all the churches, except by their volun- 
tary consent. As no church has authority to make a written law and thus 
fasten it upon themselves, and as the whole denomination never yet met 
together since the apostles' days in any one assembly to make a law that 
shall bind all Baptists, whether they consent thereto or not, and as all 
churches are free and independent of one another, and as one church is not 
superior to another, it must follow that no ecclesiastical law can be made 
with power of passing necessary obligations upon all churches. But when 
any custom is established it is adopted by a church, by a number, or by all. 
If by all, then all consent first or last, and then every church may govern 
itself by that measure. But if it is adopted by a certain number only, then 
they can but by that measure rule themselves alone ; but if they attempt to 
obtrude it upon others, then comes in the precept of the Apostle Paul : 
Stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has made you free, and be not 
again entangled in the yoke of bondage. 

For when Christ made us free from the law of ritualistic ceremonies, 
which had been appointed to the Jewish people and priesthood, and to 
which all other people were bound if they came into that communion, it 
would be intolerable that the churches, that rejoiced in their freedom from 
the yoke j)reviously imposed, should again submit themselves to a yoke of 
ordinances which men should make. For before, they could not, yet now 
they may exercise that freedom wherewith Christ has made them free. But 
whatsoever has its foundation in the opinions of men, and not in something 
certainly derived from the Scripture, if brought into doctrine and religion, 
and imposed on men's consciences as part of the service of God, this is 
the teaching for doctrine the commandments of men. And whatsoever is 
deduced only by probable interpretation be obtruded as a matter of doc- 
trine, or whatsoever ought to be piously counseled be turned into a written, 
perpetual and an absolute law — not as matters of choice and liberty, but as 
of necessity ; in all these cases the commandments of men are taught for 
doctrine. 

The immutable principles — the doctrines of God's word — need no laws to 
make them more binding, nor ought they to be confounded with simple 
rules of church practice. They are stable and inflexible, and, once embod- 
ied into a written code, they are but human opinions, and, if they be imposed 
for doctrine, it is literally the thing which the Apostle Paul reproves. 
Although it might be conceded that these human enactments be not con- 
trary to the faith once delivered to the saints, yet they burden religion, and 



128 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

load with a servile pressure the churches whom Christ left free, and charged 
only with two ordinances, Baptism and the Lord's Supper. If this be 
allowable, we are even in a worse condition than the Jews, for though they 
were burdened with many things, yet they were charged only with burdens 
that God imposed, but not with the presumptuous enactments of men. For, 
if by any means they be taught for doctrine and commandments of God, 
they become unlawful in the imposition, though they be evident truths, and 
do not bind the churches, for they are such things in which no man or 
church can have authority, for they are a direct destruction of both ecclesi- 
astical and Christian liberty, which no man can take from us. 

It is not only he who gives the law, but, likewise, he who interprets and 
authoritatively expounds the law, becomes to ua the law-giver ; and all who 
voluntarily unite themselves with the church confess themselves thereby 
subject to these ecclesiastical laws ; but all do not see the law, nor obey it, 
alike, who confess themselves equally bound, and are equally desirous of 
obeying. This is true, because men, by new, or false, or imperfect interpre- 
tations of the Scriptures, became a law unto themselves, or to others ; thus 
laying down rules which our blessed Lord never intended. Man's ideas of 
what a Scripture doctrine ought to be is not the law, or its measure. We 
cannot, independently of the Scriptures, reason out a system, because it 
seems to us reasonable. It is in vain that men talk about reason as an 
infallible guide in ecclesiastical matters. For the theory of the sovereignty 
of reason is the source of aU errors, for each pretends to have reason for 
himself, and each arrogates to himself the right of making his own ideas of 
orthodoxy triumphant as the most useful to the church, and each has his 
plan of action, or of reform. Hence we see that if men were permitted to 
enter the sacred domain of faith and doctrine, and to lay down rules to bind 
and fetter our liberty, and to call them God's laws, we see into what net and 
snare we might be led. 

Moreover, Christ left no commission to make laws for the government of 
his churches, but rather to obey, and teach obedience to laws already made. 
Indeed until the formal institution of the churches, and the entry into a 
church covenant to obey Christ's laws, and the setting up of an ecclesiastical 
authority to bioid and to loose, to obey and be obeyed, the apostles' teachings 
were nothing more than doctrine and wholesome precepts, which every man 
might take or refuse at his own peril. There was nothing in their teachings 
that savored of power, but it was all persuasion. They did not pretend to 
be legislators, as Moses was, nor was it given unto the churches to legislate. 
They did not pretend that they had authority even to make their own writ- 
ings obligatory laws. The principles laid down in their writings they left 
for the churches to turn into ecclesiastical laws when they came formally to 
adopt them as ready made laws under church covenants to execute and to 
obey them. The task imposed upon them was to teach, to persuade, to en- 
treat ; while it became the duty of the hearer to believe, and to accept the 
doctrine taught. Faith was imposed, and it being something that is exempted 
from all human jurisdiction and law, the early apostles refrained from hedg- 
ing it in with such fetters. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 129 

God's people had been so long under the whip and spur of the law, as a 
schoolmaster, that now under the new order of things, we will no longer 
submit to the demands and commandments of men made for the govern- 
ments of the churches. We are not debtors to keep the laws of men, 
although we make them ourselves. They are but snares and fetters from 
which the new law has set us free. The law and the prophets were until John. 
John the Baptist — the first and greatest of Baptists — was the midway point 
between the past and the present ; so that we are no longer under the law, 
hit under grace. We are dead to the law. The shackles being stricken from 
us we propose to stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has made usfrect 
and be not again entangled in the yoke of bondage. Instead of again en- 
tangling the churches in the web and net of the laws of man, Christ intended 
that such rules as were necessary to supplement the Scripture laws should be 
such as should spring up in the bosom of the churches and be voluntarily 
assented to. There should be nothing of compulsion about them, but should 
be of the church's own making, and to which they would be willing, and 
be easy under, and of which they could have no cause to complain. For in 
the first incipiency of these laws, the churches in making them have no 
power but to exhort and to persuade, and therefore can enforce nothing but 
what can be reasonably persuaded, nor enjoin anything to which they are 
not willing. Being charged by Christ with the execution of her own cus- 
toms and usages in her own bosom and in her own way, she gives the gen- 
tlest and easiest sentences, and we are under no obligation to give obedience to 
the intolerable laws of those who are not of them. 

Church laws may be faulty either in kind, or in number and abundance 
of them. Of all the religious organizations now extant in the world, Bap- 
tist churches have the fewest and simplest number of any, yet it is the ten- 
dency to multiply laws even in our simple churches. It is undoubtedly the 
fact that the churches in both faith and practice in the earliest times were 
the best ; that in its first stages both faith and practice were the soundest, 
and the Scriptures were the closest followed ; and, therefore, it must of neces- 
sity follow that customs, laws and ordinances derived since are not so good 
for the churches of Christ, and the best way is to cut ofi" later innovations 
and to reduce things foreign to their original state wherein we found them. 
In many things, however, it is uncertain what the laws were in the days of 
the apostles, seeing the Scriptures do not mention all of them. So that in 
confining the churches to the practices of the apostles' times we tie them to 
a marvelously uncertain rule, unless we require the observance of no prac- 
tice but those which are known to be apostolical by the apostles' own writ- 
ings. We should be guided as much by the Acts of the apostles as by their 
writings, as the churches of this our age are known and distinguished from 
other systems by their Acts and examples rather than by legislative enact- 
ments. In Baptist church jurisprudence this rule is of such efficacy that 
it should be used as a touchstone to try all the laws of the churches of Christ 
forever. 

Hence by obligatory Scriptural examples which Baptists feel themselves 
9 



130 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

bound to follow and imitate, matters of practice as well as of religion be- 
come the law of the churches. For it is by the will and appointment of 
Christ, by whose spirit those examples were recorded in the Scriptures, that 
we find them propounded for imitation to his followers. Of course the cus- 
tomary laws, which Baptists have evolved in the practice of church govern- 
ment, help much, but the divine light of Scripture examples helps much more, 
as being more clear, distinct and particular, and with us only these examples 
are held forth to us by an infallibly divine hand, and those examples obliga- 
tory and binding. Therefore great use is to be made of such examples in 
matters of church government, by the obliging power thereof, that we may see 
how far these examples are to be a law and a rule for us under the gospel. 
The importance of these things upon church government is evident from 
these passages : Ye brethren become followers of the churches of God, which 
inJudea are in Christ Jesus. And ye became followers of us and of the Lord. 
Beloved, imitate not that which is evil, but that which is good. 1 beseech you, 
be ye imitators of me; for this cause have I sent unto you Timothy, who shall 
bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ. These things 
which you have learned, and received, and heard and seen in me, do ; and the 
God of peace shall be with you. Whose faith imitate, considering the end of 
their conversation. Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the 
name of the Lord, for an example. For I have given you an example, that 
you should do as I have done to you. Noiv all these things happened unto 
them for examples. Thus it is from the Acts of the churches Baptists learn 
wisdom. 

Baptists holding their authority from Christ, hold it not as an inherent 
right, but as a trust from Him and are accountable alone to Him for it. It 
is not their own, but it has been bought with a price. This authority can- 
not be transmitted to other hands, the churches are invested with it, in all 
its divinity and majesty, founded, as it is, in the common law of the gospel 
and is derived from Christ alone. Baptist churches become unreal, unscrip- 
tural and unapostolic, in seeking to become something other than them- 
selves. When they assume a politic place, and a politic relation with other 
churches for governmental purposes, they are thereby severed from the 
sisterhood of apostolic churches and government, and become weak and 
insignificant in the assumption of unreal powers which the apostolic churches 
never exercised. The denomination has its own place, and the churches 
have their own dignity ; but the worth and glory of each is in the fulfill- 
ment of its own law. The formation of the denomination into associations 
and conventions, if really it can be said to have any form, is artificial, and 
the government and order of it, if it can be said to have government and 
order, are of human contrivance, and are certain expedients for the accom- 
plishment of separate ends. The local church is the exclusive possession of 
those who have constituted it ; its government is their agent, deriving their 
authority to govern from Christ alone ; its laws are statutes of their own 
making ; and each is limited to the members who are joint parties in it. 
Hence it is given to the churches to assent and establish its authority as 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 131 

law. It is a law regulative of tlie individual as it also regulates tlie action 
of the churches. This power and authority belong to no individual nor to 
no collection of individual, but it is in the churches. 

These principles are themselves applications of a great universal principle 
— the discovery and perpetuation of the truth. In effect, if it is truth 
properly so-called, which regulates the relations of a church member with 
himself, ecclesiastical jurisprudence regulates the relations of men between 
one another. What is true for the spirit is good for the heart, the lives and 
the consciences of men. The establishment of these principles and the 
satisfaction of these hearts constitute the religious liberty which is assured 
by the common law of the gospel. This guarantees the free exercise of 
religious thought and action ; converts this common law of the gospel into 
rights and duties, and preserves them from danger and innovation by proper 
protection. All these principles are different modes or different expressions 
of the eternal truth of the gospel, for they are founded on truth itself, on 
liberty of conscience which is nothing more than the application of the truth, 
and on that Christian charity which is an extension and a fulfillment of this 
law. The science which insures the liberty of these religious principles, and 
the exercise of these rights and duties, is ecclesiastical jurisprudence, which 
may be termed the science of religion established in accordance with the 
law of the gospel. Jurisprudence then is the science of the law of the gospel 
as applied to Baptist church government, and, as such, is the theory of the 
rights, privileges and duties which are capable of being enforced by ecclesi- 
astical authority. So treated, it may take its place as one of those inductive 
sciences in which, by the observation of facts and the use of enlightened 
reason, a beautiful and true system of truth and doctrine has been established 
perfectly in harmony with the Scriptures, which is universally received by 
every Baptist church in the world. 

Not only so, but Baptist church jurisprudence in its investigation of the 
origin, principles and development of the common law of the gospel, obvi- 
ously furnishes rules which teach the churches to search for and acknowledge 
the truth, and to evolve good and wholesome customs and usages, to shun 
error, and to practise the existing laws and apply them conscientiously and 
religiously to every-day practice in church government. So that we may 
say, that the first principles of the common law of the gospel have a char- 
acter of truth, which touches the heart and persuades the conscience more 
than that of the principles of any human science. And that, whereas the 
principles of other sciences, and the particular truths which depend upon 
them, are only the object of the mind, and not of the heart and conscience, 
and that they do not even enter into the minds of all persons. The first 
principles of these divine laws, and the particular rules essential to these 
principles, have a character of truth which every Christian is capable of 
knowing, and which affects the mind, the heart and conscience alike. Thus 
the whole man is penetrated by them and is capable of knowing them, and 
more strongly convinced of them than of the truths of all the other human 
sciences besides, for these divine laws are rules which admit of no exceptions 



132 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

and dispensations. In order, therefore, to discover the first foundations of 
these laws of the apostolic churches, it is necessary to know what is the true 
end of those primitive churches, because their destination to that end will be 
the first rule of the way and of the steps that lead them to it, and conse- 
quently their first law, and the foundation of all the others. And that the 
philosophy of this form of government discovers nothing in it besides what 
may be of use to us and grows darker and more unintelligible the greater 
the departure fi-om the form laid down by the apostles. 

But new church constitution-makers can do nothing towards building up 
a permanent system of church polity, the models of which are not found in 
the Scriptures, for all their energies are frittered away in minor attempts at 
petty improvement upon what Christ and his apostles have made perfect. One 
sect has gone off* from the known track in one direction, and one in another; 
so that when all Christendom is called upon to make a show for unity — 
Christian imity — requiring massed combination, no two churches, or rather 
sects, would be near enough to act together. It is the dull traditional habit 
that Baptists have of going back to the Bible for forms and models, that 
guides their actions, and is the steady frame in which the writer upon eccle- 
siasticail government must set the picture that he paints. In all this tradi- 
tional part of our polity is most easily impressed and acted on by that 'which 
is handed down by the apostles. From the Bible standpoint, yesterday's 
form of ecclesiastical government is by far the best for to-day ; to-day's is 
best for to-morrow ; it is most ready, the most influential, the most easy to 
get obeyed, the most likely to retain the reverence which it alone inherits, 
and which every other must win. The characteristic merit of Baptist church 
polity is, that its true nature is rather complicated and hard to describe. 
Baptists have made, or rather stumbled on, an ecclesiastical constitution, 
which, from a worldly standpoint, seems to be full of every species of inci- 
dental defect, though seemingly of the worst workmanship of any church 
constitution in the world— yet has two capital merits: it contains a simple 
machinery which, on occasion, and when wanted, can work more simply and 
easily, and better, than any instrument of church government that has yet 
been tried ; and it contains Scripturally historical parts, which it has inherited 
from a long past, which guides by an insensible but an omnipotent influence 
all the churches under its jiu^isdiction. Its essence is strong with the strength 
of Scriptural simplicity, its exterior is august with the landmarks of Scriptu- 
ral grandeur. Its footprints may be traced all along the line of ecclesiastical 
history in many various countries and ages. Besides its visible outside is 
narrowly confined to simple independent churches with an analogous history 
and similar ecclesiastical materials to the apostolic churches. 

The sum total of the whole matter is that by the use of all these laws thus 
engendered Baptists are taught to do that of their own voluntary free will 
and accord which they in other systems might be compelled to do by an 
arbitrary law imposed by others, and that from without. Such a system is 
far. more than Baptistic ; it is a common apostolic possession; it entered 
into the very constitution of the early churches and has been the rule of 
action ever since. 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 133 



CHAPTER V. 

BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; ITS RELATION TO CHURCH GOVERN- 
MENT. 

""^yO truth is more patent than the adage that it is the tendency of power, 
J-N whether ecclesiastical or political, to escape from the many to the 
few. This is literally true in all countries and more especially in all 
denominations of Christians where the mass of the people are uneducated 
and ignorant. While overgrown ecclesiastical governments such as we see 
now erected in the world have been the principal instruments of despotism 
in all ages, ignorance, dense, dark ignorance, has been the sole condition 
which invited and led to it. 

But the adage that the tendency of ecclesiastical power is to escape from 
the many to the few does not apply to the Baptists of the world, who of all 
people have been the most zealous of the right to self-govern themselves, 
and among whom the knowledge of the gospel is universally diffused by 
means of the popular preaching of the same, and where the membership are 
free in spirit, as well as in person, and enjoy the means, as well as the lib- 
erty, of reading and thinking for themselves. The intellects of such a peo- 
ple are always active ; they are generally intelligent and imbued with the 
true spirit of religious liberty and a love of political, as well as ecclesiastical 
freedom. Such a people can seldom be influenced by priestly authority, or 
managed by factional leaders in either temporal or spiritual matters ; but 
each one seems to be governed by the independent operations of his own 
mind, and relies upon his own judgment. 

There is no danger of such a people and church being too much under 
the influence of those who term themselves leaders, but in Baptist church 
government the tendency is to the contrary ; they are apt to have too much 
confidence in themselves, and to pay too little heed to the experience of 
others, to the instruction of the aged, and to the lessons of ecclesiastical his- 
tory. Every Baptist is a full-fledged freeman in Christ Jesus, cognizant of 
his freedom, too much so to recognize the superiority of others, or to follow 
them blindly as leaders. The only restraint upon them arises from a love 
of the church and denominational public opinion. Such a people may 
therefore be truly said to govern themselves ; inasmuch as each one helps to 
make the laws, and to form the public opinion, by which they are governed. 
It is a pure democracy, which means a government in which every member 
of the church has equal ecclesiastical rights and equal powers, and partici- 
pates equally in the practical business and administration of the government 
of the church in all of its branches. This was the case in each of the apes- 



134 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHIJRCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

tolic churclies we see set up in the New Testament by the apostles, where 
each separate and distinct body of worshipers constituted an independent 
church and government ; and being few in numbers, and the subject and 
proper jurisdiction of ecclesiastical government being very limited, such a 
system and form of government can be carried into elSect ; but it is utterly 
impracticable when applied to what is called the universal church. The 
apostles doubtless saw this and refrained from setting up any ecclesiastical 
hierarchy, or monarchy to lord it over the churches. How can an ignorant 
multitude scattered over a broad area of country who have no definite opin- 
ions upon, or experience in matters of church government, have an equal 
influence in administering the government with the priesthood who believe 
they have a divine right to rule the church, and who think for them, and 
control them ? How can the laws of the church and the blessed truths of 
the gospel be a compound and a consensus of the opinions of men who have 
no opinion on such subjects, and who have never been allowed either to 
think or act for themselves ? Or is all this difficulty to be avoided by erect- 
ing a huge ecclesiastical power, wherein and whereby the clergy in councils, 
conferences and general assemblies, prepare codes of written laws and 
creeds, and have the people, without understanding them, adopt them as 
their own ? 

These illustrations are sufficient to show that it is impossible, in the 
nature of things, when the apostolic form of church government is destroyed 
and local church lines are obliterated, for the mass of the membership of 
the churches, who are denied the right of self-government, to have a real 
and substantial and intelligent influence and participation in the administra- 
tion of ecclesiastical affairs. It is true they may have an apparent and 
nominal participation, but a nominal one onty. They may have a nominal 
power equal to that of the priesthood, and the more educated classes, who 
form their opinions, but it cannot be real. How indispensably necessary, 
therefore, even in Baptist church government, that all the membership 
should be admitted to equal participation in church affiiirs, and all should 
be educated and have their minds and hearts expanded by a thorough under- 
standing of the Scriptures — the law-book of the churches — so as to be able 
to think and judge for themselves. It is susceptible of demonstration from 
a scientific standpoint, that a powerfiil ecclesiastical aristocracy retards the 
human mind and stifles Christian development, and holds it in bondage, 
thereby paralyzes the energies of the great mass of the churches, checks and 
depresses a spirit of inquiry into the great truths of the gospel, and prevents 
progress and improvement in the Christian religion. The apostolic form of 
church government was the origin of local ecclesiastical power and the very 
germ of religious liberty in the world. Without church independence and 
local church government no such thing as religious liberty and liberty of 
conscience can exist. Local church sovereignty, local church equality and 
local church independence are the main bulwarks of rehgious, political and 
civil liberty. 

True church government, in order to fulfill the notion of a wise and useful 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 135 

institution, such as the apostles erected, should aim to connect the private 
welfare of individuals with the good of the church. To suppose that the 
proper idea of church government was that it had regard exclusively to 
denominational affairs, and took little account of men's private and spiritual 
interests, would be to form a very inadequate conception of apostoHc church 
government. The development of a great denomination is necessary to a 
great end, rather than the end itself. To permit all individuals in a church 
to participate in church government and to allow them as much liberty and 
freedom as is consistent with good order and good morals, is the final aim 
to which they should tend. In the pure form of apostolic church govern- 
ment the executive and judicial powers are to be wielded by the same 
persons in mass, thus encumbering every member in the church with the 
multiplicity of all church affairs, that they may know what is going on and 
take an interest therein, in order that there might not be wanting that con- 
centrated attention to the affairs of God's house, which is indispensable to a 
skillful management of them. Thus is laid the foundation for a great body 
of experience. It is of the highest importance that churches, as well as 
individuals, should be placed in a situation which enables them to make 
actual experiment of the utility of those diversified rules which the wants 
of the churches render necessary. The administration of the affairs of a 
Baptist church embraces a vast scope of practical interests which, being 
leveled to the capacities of all, call into requisition a great amount of popu- 
lar talent which in other systems lies dormant ; and as they who make the 
rules are the very persons who will execute them, and will derive advantage, 
or suffer inconvenience from them, a most instructive school of experience 
is established, in which all are compelled to learn something. 

Whenever the great mass of the membership of any religious people are 
denied the rights to participate in church affairs, they feel themselves inca- 
pacitated to take any part, even the most indirect, in church affairs. This 
feeling cannot be shaken off, for knowledge is power, in religious affairs, as 
well as in every other department of human life ; and whenever there is 
great ignorance in these things, the desire and the power to will effectually 
are both wanting. This state of things, for the time being at least, with- 
draws all ecclesiastical power from the membership, and reposes it in the 
hands of those who, either by rank or education, are lifted to a higher con- 
dition. Ecclesiastical power is thus transferred easily, and without noise, to 
a very small portion of the denomination. But whenever a set of institutions 
come to represent the opinions and feelings peculiar to a class, such as the 
clergy, those opinions and feelings will not be understood by those who are 
out of the class. The modes of thinking and acting among the former will 
begin to wear an air of mystery and superstition, which time will only 
increase, until at length the whole machinery, of what are termed great 
ecclesiastical affairs, will be absolutely unfathomable by the multitude of 
church members, whose right and duty it is to participate in these pro- 
ceedings. 

In the contemplation of an infinite and eternal Providence, which founded 



136 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

and has miraculously preserved true apostolic church government, the 
science and philosophy of it finds certain divine proofs, which confirm and 
demonstrate it. He, who would attempt to explain this peculiar kind of gov- 
ernment and law, must do so by ways which are as easy as the natural man- 
ners of men, having not for an end any display of his own learning, if he 
have any, but have for a counselor that wisdom which, it is hoped, comes 
down from above, and disposes everything in perfect order. Throughout all 
the obscurity the commencement of these wonderful churches, what more 
sublime proofs of their divinity could we desire, than in the nature and 
order of events, and their end, which have resulted in their preservation 
and perpetuation, without change and without corruption? 

We have seen that the Scripture rules of church government, and the 
customary laws arising out of them, are truths which experience and reason 
teach men, that they have of themselves the Scripturalness and authority 
which oblige the churches to observe and obey them, and that no one can 
pretend ignorance of them : that, on the other hand, the arbitrary written 
rules laid down by other systems are, as facts, naturally unknown to those 
who are to execute them, and which are not binding till after they have 
been promulgated. From whence it follows that those laws which prevail 
in Baptist churches regulate both the time to come and the time past, -while 
written rules as applied to church government derive their authority only 
from the power of the ecclesiastical law-giver, who determines as to what 
he prescribes, and since they have not their eflfect till after they have been 
made known to the churches by publication, they regulate only what is to 
come, and have nothing to do with the past. When it becomes necessary 
to repeal an ecclesiastical law, which has been reduced to writing and 
enacted into a law, it must be done by the same tribunal that made it, by 
enacting another law for that purpose ; whereas in Baptist church govern- 
ment, it is done by a long disuse, which either changes or abolishes it. ¥/ith 
us, by usage a law is enacted, and by long disuse it is repealed. In like 
manner Scripture rules and customary laws are interpreted by usage. If 
the difficulties which may happen in the interpretation of these rules and 
customs are explained by an ancient usage, which has fixed the sense of 
them, and which is confirmed by a constant series of uniform action of the 
churches, — Baptists have ever adhered to the sense declared by the constant 
practice, which is the best, and, with us, the only authoritative interpreter 
of these laws as applied to church government. But if we look to the 
proper basis, the true essence of Baptist church jurisprudence in relation of 
cause and effect, we must conclude that such a law as that we here treat of 
has its existence, its reality, in the Scriptures themselves. In the uniformity 
of a continued and enduring mode of development by interpretation, we 
recognize its common root quite distinct from mere chance. Usage and 
custom, then, are the signs and outward manifestations of church juris- 
prudence, not its foundation. 

It is only in a popular form of church government, like the apostolic, that 
the whole church is sovereign, and at first glance one would suppose that 



OE, THE COMMON LATV OF THE GOSPEL. 137 

this form of polity would be subject to fluctuatioos and changes. But the 
exercise of the right to change is very rare, because there is no clash of the 
different forces or interests of the different bodies amongst which the differ- 
ent shares of power are distributed. In post-apostolic governments, -which 
are mixed in their nature, the different bodies or classes of ministers share 
the authority, each is in a perpetual anxiety to execute its own portion of 
power, and the body which represents the greatest part of the sovereignty, 
and possesses the power of disposing of the fundamental elements of the 
churches, has always an interest in altering it, either by increasing its own 
share of power, or diminishing it, to gratify themselves Under such a sys- 
tem church government can never be fixed and certain. This distribution 
of powers ecclesiastical without some central outside influence to hold it in 
check leads to different views, not only according to men's ambition and 
wickedness, but because they are finite beings. Though these clashing inter- 
ests were not actuated by selfishness, still sovereign power lodged in the local 
church as an organic unit would be necessary in order to preserve primitive 
church polity in its original integrity, and to protect the entire relations of 
the membership. Each member, first of all, is the key through which he 
has to understand that which is around him. If, then, every member is 
equal, and shall have his due, how can it be otherwise done than by an equal 
distribution of powers among the membership, to sustain church law and 
authority in its original integrity ? 

AVhile insisting that Baptist churches are the most free and independent 
bodies in any church polity, and are incapable of legal limitation, yet we 
must admit that their sovereignty is restrained from issuing some commands, 
and are bound to ksue others by rules which, though they are not laws, are 
of extreme cogency. Every church is perfectly sovereign, and we might 
say for the purpose of argument, it might do anything it pleaded, yet it 
would be outraging all experience to assert that they would do this. That 
reverence they have for the law of the gospel, together with that great body 
of common law rules which is embodied in ecclesiastical maxims, keeps 
them from doing some things ; while that body of rules which in ordinary 
usage are called moral precepts keeps them from doing others. Its sanction 
is denominational opinion, or the disapproval of the great bulk of the 
churches following on its violation. The rule that keeps the churches from 
consolidating themselves into a body politic for rule and government, the 
rule that prevents them from making distinctions amongst the ministry, and 
allowing them to govern the churches, are connected together through the 
penalty attendant on a breach of them, which is the strong disapprobation 
of all the churches of like faith and order ; and it is having a sanction of 
some kind which principally connects both rules with laws proper. A church 
cannot cede its sovereignty even on condition that it shall be used for its 
own good. 

God has abundantly blessed the Baptists of the United States in that he 
has kept them free from parties and factional quarrels. Let every Baptist 
imagine what would be the inevitable consequences of local errors, of which 



138 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

we are not entirely free, if we did not live in independent churches under a 
system of covenanted self-government ; each shock would be felt from one 
end of the denomination to the other with unbroken force. Had we nothing 
but an universal church government, ruled over by priests and bishops, 
spreading like one universal see over the whole, an error perpetrated would 
disturb the whole as it now agitates a local church in our polity. Each 
separate church is a royal republic, and is pecuHarly efficient in breaking 
those shocks which in centralized systems reach the farthest corners of the 
denomination and are frequently of a ruinous tendency, and has the same 
effect upon the local church which a careful and responsible occupation with 
one's own affairs and duties has upon .the individual. It is true some can 
discover slight shades of differences upon points of doctrine and practice, but 
it is believed and hoped that these differences will become less noticeable as 
the churches become better acquainted with one another. By parly and 
factional differences I understand those which are founded in the history of 
the churches through a long series of years, parties and factions which ad- 
here to certain ecclesiastical ideas, handed down from generation to genera- 
tion, developed and modified by repeated practical application, and expanded 
into a certain system and doctrine, having taken root in the practical life of 
the churches. But so far as the government of the churches is concerned, 
with which this treatise has only to do, it is happily the same in every section 
of our country. There are those who adhere to what exists in faith and 
practice, who strive to maintain, to preserve, and who represent the neces- 
sary stability of the churches, without which church government cannot 
remain stable ; and there are those who look forward, desire to change, inno- 
vate and develop. Either tendency is dangerous if adhered to too tena- 
ciously. The former frequently carry their endeavors too far, and wish to 
preserve indiscriminately, so that conservatism alone becomes the watch- 
word. But that which is bad, inconvenient or mischievous, ought not to be 
retained, for it is frequently as heretical to preserve as to destroy. The 
others often go too far, disregarding the gradualness of one set of ecclesiasti- 
cal principles growing out of those that preceded them, and desire change 
without experience or modification ; change for its own sake. 

The failure of those bodies of Baptists which have sprung from the regular 
Baptist denomination, such as the Free-will Baptists, the Primitive Baptists 
and several other orders of a more fungus growth, permanently to establish 
a new form of church government, shows how powerless they are to change 
the fundamental elements of the Bible form of government in which they 
were educated. When at first they broke away from that polity it had a 
tendency to disturb and retard the progress of Christ's churches, but they 
had not the heart and, indeed, they knew not how to set up a new form of 
government. It is the same with individual men who have from time to 
time appeared in our churches, and who have attempted to change either 
the polity or faith of the churches. Those who regard the history of the 
churches as, to some extent, the history of the great men of the churches, 
and that these great men have shaped the polity of the churches, overlook 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 139 

the truth that such men are the products of the churches. Without the 
churches they neither could have been generated nor could have had the 
culture and training which formed them. If the churches are to some extent 
guided and ruled by them, they were, both before and after their ordination, 
guided and ruled by the churches. They were the results of all those influ- 
ences which fostered the ancestral character they inherited from those who 
went in and out before them, and gave their own early bias, belief, knowl- 
edge and aspiration to make them what they are. So that such changes, if 
any, as are traceable to outside kindred bodies or to individuals, are still 
remotely traceable to the legitimate causes which produced those individuals, 
and hence, from the highest point of view, such legitimate changes also, are 
parts of the general developmental process. So that which is true of the 
ecclesiastical structure of the local churches, is true of the whole denomina- 
tional structure. The fact that a system of church government is not made, 
but is a growth out of the laws of God's eternal word, is a fundamental ele- 
ment of church polity that under all its aspects and through all its ramifica- 
tions Baptist church government is a growth and not a manufacture. 

If Baptists can claim any one virtue for their form of church govern- 
ment above another it is stability. It is the tradition of the churches ; each 
generation of churches describes what it sees, but it uses words transmitted 
from the past. Hence some will charge the author of these commentaries 
as being antiquated and old fogyish. But when a great subject like Baptist 
church government has continued in a connected outward sameness, but 
hidden inner change for many ages, every intelligent Baptist can but inherit 
the same spirit of antiquity, which has ever characterized our denomination. 
It is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness old clothes in 
the fashion of his youth ; what you see of him is the same ; what you do not 
see is wholly altered. This system, whether it be the best polity or not, 
is conceived to be the one which the early Christians inherited from Christ 
and his apostles. It is believed that out of these materials nothing better, 
and certainly nothing more Scriptural, can be made than the Baptist form 
of government ; and it is also believed that the essential parts of the Bible 
system cannot be made except from these materials. Now these elements 
are alone the accidents of the apostolic times where these co-laborers with 
the Saviour founded the churches ; they belong only to the first century of 
the churches before they became corrupted and distorted in governmental 
form. This form of polity cannot become monarchical, so to speak, even if 
the whole Christian world had so decreed, even if the whole of the churches 
had ratified it. This independent form of government is inherited just as 
we have inherited the Bible as the law of God. You might as well adopt 
a father as to adopt a consolidated form of church government. The special 
sentiment belonging to the one is as incapable of voluntary creation, by 
human wisdom, as the peculiar aflfection belonging to the other. It is a 
polity indigenous to Bible soil alone. 

This mode of constituting a Baptist church, which is the type of countless 
others, is but the direct handing on of churches of like faith and order from 



140 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

one generation to another, and from one country to another. It is a process 
which can properly be called imitation ; it is not so much the framing of 
something after the model of something else ; it is rather the actual transla- 
tion of the thing itself to a kindred soil. Men who feel themselves at liberty 
to choose their own form of church government, may, after thought and 
debate, choose one model to follow, when they might have chosen another. 
This work, however closely it may attempt to reproduce the likeness of the 
original, is not the original ; it is not even the transplanted original ; it is 
something which has a distinct being and which starts from a beginning of 
its own. When we find an exact likeness between Baptist churches of any 
two nations, which likeness we cannot reasonably attribute to conscious 
transmission, there are two ways possible in which the likeness may be 
explained. It may be that there is no direct connection whatever, conscious 
or unconscious, between the two. The likeness may be real and beyond 
doubt, but there may be a reason to believe either that one people has bor- 
rowed from the other, or that both have inherited from a common stock — 
the Bible. The cause of the likeness may simply be accounted for upon the 
scientific grounds that like causes have, at however great a distance of time 
and place, led to like results. The ecclesiastical institutions of a people are 
the natural growth of the circumstances under which they find themselves ; 
if churches that take their polity from the Bible alone, however far removed 
they may be from one another, both in time and place, find themselves under 
like circumstances, the facts are inevitable that the effect of this likeness of 
circumstances will show itself in the likeness of the churches themselves. 
The same evils will suggest the same remedies ; the same needs will sug- 
gest the same means of supplying them. Like begets like is a law of 
development. 

Then the important question arises, Do these churches perpetually suc- 
ceed one another and have they thus come down to us from the apostles* 
times ? This burning question among Baptists can only be answered by a 
careful comparison of our churches of to-day with the primitive churches 
in the days of the apostles. As there are some topics of church jurispru- 
dence quite beyond the reach of ethical rules to define, so there are some 
matters of church history beyond our knowledge and understanding to find 
out except by comparison. This really is a question of church history, with 
which this treatise has but little to do, and belongs to the historian rather 
than to church jurisprudence with which I am dealing exclusively. But 
that an independent church may voluntarily relinquish its sovereignty by 
dissolving itself or destroy itself by the practice of some rank heresy, is 
frankly admitted. It can cede itself only to something already actually 
existing of like faith and order, for to cede to nothing and not to cede is 
one and the same thing. It can part with its own sovereignty by dissolving 
itself and uniting with another gospel church, but not by merging itself into 
nothing; and when it parts with its existence it ceases to be a church and 
becomes a part of the church with which it unites provided it be of the 
same faith and order. A church can thus abdicate its power, because by 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 141 

abdicating it lays down its trust, but cannot transfer that trust to a body not 
a church of Christ; for an independent church not merged in another of 
like faith and order, cannot cease to be a sovereign church, even if it would. 
And this they cannot do even by agreement, because the moment the parties 
to the agreement cease to be churches, the agreement, on which alone 
depends the new institution, is vacated, in like manner as a contract is 
vacated by the death of the contracting parties. A church cannot delegate 
away its own ecclesiastical existence, for a church it is, and cannot but be, 
so long as it remains a church not subjected to another body or tribunal of 
men. We have, therefore, to make a careful comparison of these churches 
with the churches of the apostles' times, and if we find them in every respect 
essentially the same in faith and practice, we conclude logically that they 
have succeeded one another and have come down to us from the primitive 
times. But after all we should put more stress upon the likeness and 
similarity between the two forms of polity than upon the perpetual succes- 
sion of the churches, for it seems to me that it is impossible for the church 
historian to prove the succession beyond the possibility of a doubt. And 
even to a.dmit (which I do not do except for the sake of argument) that a 
hiatus existed at some time during their history it would prove nothing as 
to the genuineness and Scriptural validity of Baptist churches of to-day. 
For Christ has left us the grand charter by which to institute these churches, 
and we are at liberty to use it at any time when the material is at hand to 
build a church of Chrtst. 

As I have said, it devolves upon the Baptist church historian to prove the 
perpetual succession of the churches. But one of the objects of this treatise 
is to assist the historian in that task. And one of the means of so doing is 
to show that the first work of the first disciples in building the apostolic 
churches was to bind men together in the strong bond of a Scriptural 
legality, and in an indissoluble, inflexible custom. Every independent 
church was an hereditary co-operative assembly, bound together by not only 
the laws of the gospel, but by the force of usage and custom. And we 
know that these independent local assemblies continued for ages. The first 
history of the apostolic churches does not delineate a great ecclesiastical 
monarchy composed of all the then churches in existence, but rather of 
local independent churches. If these early churches were to be gradually 
improved, each generation must be born better, and more capable of Chris- 
tian civilization. Indeed the greatest difficulty with Baptists is not in pre- 
serving the original polity of the churches, but the hard thing with them is 
to know how to end it. As we find the polity of the churches reflected in 
the Scriptures, so has it ever remained. It has been closely embalmed in 
an exact imitation of its primitive existence. Baptists rejoice that so far as 
this ancient polity is concerned they have been pegged down by ancient 
usage and custom, and forced to move in the straight and narrow furrow of 
the old fixed way of the law of the gospel. The characteristic necessity of 
these early churches was strict usage and binding coercive custom arising 
out of this gospel law. The obvious result and inevitable consequence of 



142 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

this kind of polity is a rigid stability; no one church can be different from 
the other, nor can it cultivate any difference in polity, without destroying 
itself. Hence we as Baptists would not regard the fundamental forms upon 
which ecclesiastical government rested, as destroyed with the extinction of 
every church now extant in the world, as long as Christ's royal charter 
exists by which others are authorized to be instituted. The gates of hell can 
no more prevail against the churches of Christ than they can prevail against 
his authority to institute them under the forms given to the apostles in the 
law of the gospel. Baptists hold fast to these divine foundations, and 
though the institutional bond that now binds the churches together be 
broken, Baptists could look to Christ's authority for the institution of others 
of like faith and order under the same charter that authorizes the establish- 
ment of churches now, and that without the permission or assistance of pope, 
or bishop, or conference, or synod. 

Great has been the progress and development of this form of government 
within the last quarter of a century. We attempt to-day, and with good 
reason and much anxiety, to reconnect what we now are with what we form- 
erly were ; we feel the necessity of bringing our habits as a denomination 
into association with the recollections of the past, and to gather together the 
links in the chain of time, which never allows itself to be entirely broken, 
however violent may be the assaults made upon it. Plow much soever we 
may deprecate any departure from primitive Baptist church government, 
we should not refuse the aid which can be derived from modern ideas and 
institutions, in order to guide our apprehension and judgment while study- 
ing the primitive ways of the churches, since we neither can nor would wish 
to place any stumbling block in the way of any legitimate progress of the 
churches, or be separated from our brethren who are leading these great 
developments, any more than we would attempt or desire to isolate ourselves 
from our Baptist forefathers. Let Baptists be exceedingly cautious, how- 
ever. The superior vantage-ground on which we stand, and on which Bap- 
tists have been born, so to speak, is a gift from our ancestors whose precious 
blood has been freely shed to uphold them. The Christian world reaps the 
fruits of their labors and sacrifices — is it too much for us to follow closely 
the memory of those laborers, and to render a just recompense for those sac- 
rifices? When we investigate the cause of this rapid growth only one 
explanation can be found. At the moment of all great developments in 
church affairs, during epochs full of progress and hope, when important 
changes are on all sides demanded and necessary, the authority of the past 
is the one obstacle which opposes itself to all tendency to innovation. The 
present time is not only fraught with hope, but with many dangers, and the 
wisdom of the centuries is appealed to by one party, in order to resist the 
future to which the aspirations of the other party are directed. Baptists 
should never allow a kind of blind hatred of the past history of the 
churches to take possession of their minds. Let us then reassure ourselves 
with reference to the study of the past. It is the sheet anchor of true 
church polity, and contains nothing which ought to alarm the friends of all 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 143 

that is good and true in church law and history. It is into our hands, and 
in subservience to interests which are dear to us, that it will ever deposit the 
authority of antiquity and the lessons of experience. 

Give us the primitive beginning of a system of church government dating 
from the days of the apostles and there is no trouble about a succession of 
churches of like faith and order under that system. Cut off the beginning 
and end of the churches and the rest of the demonstration proves nothing. 
Give us the beginning and the end of a pure and Scriptural system of 
churches and there is no trouble in arriving at their true nature and tend- 
ency during those times when recorded ecclesiastical history sheds no light 
upon them whatever. In any system of church polity where the primitive 
beginning is ignored, where there is no likeness or imitation, no claims as to 
its divinity can be set up and successfully maintained upon any scientific or 
Scripturar principles. An intelligent and a divinely inspired system of gov- 
ernment must start at the beginning and be a continuous whole — an organic 
whole — an aggregate of independent and inter-dependent churches perpetu- 
ated by a divine organism. It is a divinely inspired whole, having its com- 
ponent elements inextricably bound up with the apostolic models which 
never have been departed from. We see the same kind of free and inde- 
pendent churches in full operation in the days of the apostles, and we see 
the same kind in organic operation in this day and generation. They did 
exist in the earliest times, must have existed from the earliest times, must, 
in the providence of God, have been in continuous existence, generation 
after generation down to the present day. So that Baptist churches are so 
grounded in the law of the gospel, and in the lasting benefit to the churches, 
that it must be taken as the expression of that immutable law which cannot 
be abolished. 

I have no hesitancy in affirming, that it was impossible, under the apos- 
tolic system of church polity, for a consolidated system to spring up by 
natural growth under both the example and practice of the apostles. These 
imperial systems, we now see set up in the Christian world, are incompat- 
ible with the teachings of the apostles. They belong to a later period of 
apostasy from the faith and practice of the gospel. This system appeared 
in some instances as early as the latter part of the second, and the first part 
of the third centuries, and was founded upon usurpation, was considered 
illegitimate by those loyal to the gospel, and was, in fact, alien to the ideas 
of apostolic church government. The union of all those churches, for gov- 
ernmental purposes, was a religious despotism founded upon usurpation, and 
was the germ out of which all later consolidated systems arose ; while the 
independent churches founded by the apostles were ecclesiastical democra- 
cies, so to speak, and nothing more. And Baptists affirm, and verily 
believe, that this polity, as formed by the apostles, which we see in full and 
successful operation in the Bible times of the churches, with their powers, 
functions and mode of administration, has come down to them through all 
the generations since that time to the present, with scarcely a change in its 
internal organization. Their primary institutions root themselves in this 



144 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

original apostolic form of government, in whicli each remained independent 
in all matters pertaining to local self-government, on the basis of equality. 
If in anything they have departed from the faith or practice of the gospel, 
they desire not to depart further therefrom, but to return to the original 
formulas. 

It has often been urged against the history of the Baptist church that it 
is not one of the historic churches, and that its laws and government have no 
philosophy in it. That it does not embrace in it anything like a systematic 
and succinct code of laws, as applied to government, that elevates itself to 
the dignity of a system worthy the name. Those who make these charges 
have not taken the pains to look into the system, and hence do not know 
how much of beauty and utility there is in the Baptist form of church gov- 
ernment, embracing as it does the longest line of consecutive ecclesiastical 
church government and history of any system now extant in the world. It 
began with the beginning of Christ's churches on earth, and will end with 
the ending. Whatever of philosophy and science there is in it has been 
discovered by, and utilized to the edification of, those who, from long study 
and practice, are in the best condition to understand and appreciate it. 
This system, when properly understood, is one of the greatest triumphs ever 
achieved by any religious people in the world, and the rich treasures, of its 
ancient wisdom ought not to be left unused any longer, for in this enlight- 
ened age there are numerous and important reasons for its cultivation 
among Baptists. It will give us an insight into the beauty, wisdom and 
divinity of our system that perhaps we never saw before, and cause us to 
reverence the more the Divine Author of it. It will show us that this 
Author of the churches is related to them as creator and preserver ; the 
laws by which he founded the churches are those by which he preserves 
them ; and that Baptists, like good architects, accommodate their building 
to the nature of the materials which they meet on the ground, and con- 
form and confine the superstructure to the foundation already laid. 

Baptist church jurisprudence is as the history of one man who has lived 
through all the ages since the foundation of the churches and continually 
learned something, and now seeks to record it so that it may serve as a guide 
and a ready reference to those of this present time. How this law becomes 
binding upon the churches is plain to be understood. As the Scriptures 
give but very few rules relating to the internal workings of the churches, 
and as the common welfare requires the development of a system of cus- 
tomary laws, they are bound to submit to the law thus evolved ; and the law 
thus introduced, so far as it does not conflict with the Scriptures, ought to 
be considered, and really is, the common law of all the churches. This law 
rests its obligation upon the general consent and practice of the churches as 
evidenced in the usage of it. It is a law which necessity imposes on the 
denomination as a necessary consequence of their social union, and to which 
no one church is at liberty to refuse its consent at the risk of incurring the 
denominational displeasure and disfellowship. It is difficult to see how this 
form of government could be easily changed in the absence of a power to 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 145 

legislate which Baptists never have claimed, but have always denied. It is 
very evident that nothing but a long series of events and a continuous line 
of thought, all having the same tendency, could substitute for this combina- 
tion of common laws, opinions and customs, a mass of opposite usages and 
customs sufficient to change this form of government and establish another. 
Before this could be done the whole Baptist denomination must be blotted 
out of existence or revolutionized. Hence not only is there beauty and 
utility here displayed, but likewise stability is one of the characteristic fea- 
tures of the system.. 

Hence Baptist church government is not a thing generated and completed 
in a day, a year or in a single generation. It no more exists complete in a 
single period of time, than does the common law of the gospel, upon which 
it is founded. It is not a momentary existence as if formulated in a written 
constitution. It is not composed of its present living membership alone, but 
it embraces those who are, and have been, and shall be, till the second coming 
of the Lord. There is in it the continuity of the generations, it reaches 
backward to John, the first great Baptist, and to the fathers, and onward to 
the children who have been satisfied with no other kind of baptism than that 
administered by this, the greatest of all men, to our blessed Saviour himself. 
This peculiar government appears in the apprehension of these churches as 
an inheritance, received from Christ and his apostles, to be transmitted 
unimpaired to the children yet unborn. The firm conviction that the Lord 
founded this ecclesiastical government, makes the churches an heritage 
worth living and worth dying for and worth preserving in its integrity. It 
has been the same in sunshine and in shadow, in the dark ages as well as in 
those of enlightenment. In it the law and the testimony also are conserved 
and preserved. As the best productions and choicest attainments pass 
slowly from their germ to their perfection, so Baptist church government, as 
well as its jurisprudence, has been slowly but surely developed, until now it 
has come to be recognized as the most stable as well as the most simple of 
all systems. This government has been shaped by no external force, but by 
an inner law ; its changes, if any, are those of a development ; and the 
glory of Baptists has been not in uprooting, but in maintaining and 
advancing the work of their ancestors. 

In systems in which the sovereignty is vested in the membership of each 
local church, a very extraordiuary effect is produced. The government 
which is the creature of the church, and hence inferior to it, operates on 
those who hold the sovereignty, and in consequence on the church itself. 
But it operates on the membership individually, and not collectively, and as 
free citizens of Christ's kingdom, and not as subjects. The government is 
the agent which executes the covenant between the members. In church 
governments in which the ruling power is in an individual as in a bishop or 
a pope he stands above the law, and cannot be affected by it. His ^vill 
forms the law by which aU others are governed. The government is his 
instrument, and is made for others, ^nd not for him. Like the king he can 
do no wrong. 
10 



146 A TREATISE UP02T BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

A church covenant, which is the ground of the government of every local 
church, cannot become that of the government of the denomination. The 
government of the local church rests in the right of that particular member- 
ship to govern its own affairs, and this is necessarily limited to those of a 
particular church, and cannot justify the extension of any authority over 
those outside its jurisdiction. AVhen it is sought to be extended over other 
churches, it conflicts with the unity and continuity of the local church and 
its authority in its natural sovereignty, and wherever, in the organization of 
ecclesiastical government, it has been transformed beyond its natural limits, 
it has sought its justification in a civil and profane conception, and in some 
vague fiction, in imitation of the kingdoms of this earth. In Baptist 
church jurisprudence, so far as government is concerned, the denomination 
is a fiction, and the free and independent churches are over and above it 
and the former, in its relation to the churches, is subordinate. The churches, 
therefore, instead of residing in and growing out of the denomination, hold 
the latter in subjection. The denomination has its origin in the existence 
of churches all being of a oneness of will, faith and practice. The common 
law of the gospel, which permeates the whole, does not constitute the whole 
a body ecclesiastic for government, and does not attain to the dignity of a 
church of Christ. It is the churches of Christ that have generated this 
jurisprudence, and not the denomination. The denomination has its fruition 
in the lives of the churches, and receives and helps to preserve such laws 
as spring up in their bosoms. Let it be said to the honor and credit of the 
Baptist denomination that they have never sought a false and fictitious 
jurisdiction over the churches. That other systems should struggle and 
contend for jurisdiction over the churches is a human frailty; a certain 
vain conceit seems to rule them, that it is the evidence of a good system to 
enlarge its jurisdiction over the churches, and to give a spur to such things 
rat'her than a bridle. But nevertheless true church government is not of a 
negative character. It does not consist in merely denying power to the 
churches. If it did, apostolic church government never could have 
emerged from its swaddling clothes and been set in operation. Government 
must have power to perform its functions, and if no provision is made for an 
orderly and organic grant of power, it will, in cases of necessity, arrogate it. 
This applies to all species of government, and especially to that of the early 
apostolic churches. Merely denying power to government, or, still worse, 
not creating a proper organism for granting it, must lead to ecclesiastical 
death or to church anarchy ; but it is equally true that the strictest possible 
limitation and hedging in by the law of the ' gospel of all ecclesiastical 
powers, are as requisite for the cause of Christ as the avoidance of the error 
just pointed out. 

It is easy to see that the effect of what has been called the universal 
church— or the extension of powers ecclesiastical over many churches, 
limited only by geographical boundaries, — is the reversal of this process. It 
is the negation of the church, the result being the paralysis of all the inde- 
pendent churches, as we see them in full and beautiful operation under the 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 147 

immediate supervision of the apostles, coupled with the necessity of forcible 
contribution towards the support of the unscriptural dominion. This system 
is post-apostolic and anti-scriptural, and has been perverted in all directions 
by priestly influence. A great deal of it is Jewish in its origin, and for that 
reason it is undoubtedly of prodigious antiquity, and, what is more impor- 
tant, we can see every essential feature of it in full operation in the Jewish 
regime. Ecclesiastical legislation has corrected some of its excesses, but its 
principles are untouched, and are still left to produce some of their results. 
This system is the Jewish idea of priestcraft a little altered — but still is the 
anti-scriptural plan in its matured, developed and refined condition, and the 
ancient Jewish institutions are seen through it plainly. In this way the 
local church is wiped out, all freedom and independence, all self-identifica- 
tion with the organic unit, all pride in self-government and self-control, 
gradually die out. Each local church is domineered over by the ministry 
of this imperial power, and misrule of every sort eats deeply into the vitals of 
Christ's plan of church polity. History and existing facts combine to 
testify to the truthfulness of the picture. The preservation of the individual 
Christian as one of an integral group, out of an assemblage of which the local 
church is formed, is one of the most momentous of the objects on behalf of 
which true church government exists It is obvious that the determination 
of the moment at which a new church takes its rise is of the utmost con- 
cern to the rest of the churches ; and, furthermore, the importance of keep- 
ing distinct from one another the diflTerent churches, although of the same 
faith and order, is of scarcely inferior concern. It has thus appeared that 
a church of Christ is an aggregate number of professed Christians in a par- 
ticular locality, preserving ideal integrity inviolate in spite of the death of 
its successive members from time to time, and having its modes of action 
determined by ecclesiastical government, upon which the whole structure 
depends. 

In the early stages of the existence of the apostolic churches, the process 
by which the spontaneous usages of the early Christians became transmuted 
into ecclesiastical laws, is constantly being repeated throughout the whole 
history of Baptist churches everywhere, and naturally so among Baptists, 
for they have no legislative tribunal to make laws, and the great mass of 
their laws continue unwritten. The process, in the case of each custom so 
transmuted into a rule of ethics, commences with a cautious admission, 
within clearly-defined limits, of the custom as a rule binding on the churches 
who may be supposed to have contemplated its existence in their transaction 
with each other. When a rule of ethics is found to exist, not among a very 
small number of Baptist churches, but among all of the same faith and 
practice, and to be constantly observed in their common transactions, and if 
the custom be ancient, certain and not counter to the general ecclesiastical 
and spiritual and social welfare of the denomination, the admission of it as 
qualifying the ordinary Scriptural rule, if there be one, becomes a fixed rule 
of ethics of all Baptist churches. This admission in time acts back again 
on the rule thus generated, and gives it definiteness and solidity. In this 



148 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

way tlie rule becomes eventually binding on all the churches, and, in fact, 
takes the place of ecclesiastical legislation, which all other systems practice 
with impunity, and is indistinguishable from written law itself. Every part 
of the law of every Baptist church, which is not found in the Scriptures, is 
made in this way, especially that great body of ethical rules regulating 
churches in their intercourse one with another. 

In the very earliest times of the churches in the absence of ecclesiastical 
legislation, the main machinery for the conversion of desultory and uncer- 
tain customs and usages into fixed ethical rules, needing only the develop- 
ment of church government to transmute them into true ecclesiastical laws, 
were the decisions of a lawfully constituted church which were constantly 
demanded for the purpose of ascertaining, for practical purposes, the true 
purport and extent of an alleged usage. The decision may have been called 
for at the hands of the church itself, or of a regularly constituted ecclesias- 
tical council, specially invited to interpose its good offices in the administra- 
tion of church affairs. The grounds of the decision may have been either a 
well-grounded knowledge of the law in such cases already established, stored 
away in the memory, or upon the ground of general expediency, or upon 
considerations purely personal in their nature. Whatever the grounds may 
have been, the decision was something more than the custom which it was 
called upon to interpret and solidify. It became a true precedent itself, and 
from the particulars of its form and the solemnity of the circumstances out 
of which it sprang, was likely to outweigh in authority the original material 
on which it was based. It needed only the complete institution of ecclesias- 
tical government, and the recognition of denominational authorization to 
perfect the truly legal character of these ethical rules in embryo. The 
process of ecclesiastical controversies, so far as they take place before a 
church, affords the only occasion on which, in the primitive churches at 
least, that public attention is arrested at the presence of law. The bulk of 
ethical rules thus generated are observed without thought or criticism. 
They are a part of the inseparable consciousness of every Baptist church, 
and prescribe the same sort of natural limitation to their activity as do the 
Scriptures upon which they are based. 

Another way in which rules of ethics grow and expand is that, they are 
developed in one church and transplanted to another. This process is likely 
to be hastened by removal from one church to another, or by the immigration 
of large Baptist populations from one section of our country to another, 
carrying with them their peculiar rules of ethics, and which cannot fail to 
affect the nature and administration of both the law and government of the 
churches. An intelligent Baptist reared in the churches of the South, 
traveling or living in the North, witnesses the observance of many minor 
rules to which he is not accustomed. Likewise one sojourning in the South, 
v/ho has spent the greater part of his life in the North, will see many usages 
to which he is a stranger, and in f-!ct he may discern slight shades of differ- 
ences in doctrine. As bodies of these brethren go from one section to 
another and mingle and commingle, this will have a tendency to infuse a 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 149 

very large tincture of what may be called foreign ethics into the systems of 
the various sections which now most obstinately resist all external influences, 
80 far as this element can be incorporated independently of express ecclesi- 
astical legislation. This seeming difference, if any, is rather a difference of 
development than of origin, rather of degree than of kind. Moreover, the 
uniformity in the fundamental laws, usages and customs found among the 
churches of the North and South, may be adduced as evidence, in spite of the 
constant difficulty in deciding whether any particular development is due 
to the independent invention, or to transmission from some other systems to 
those among whom it is found. For if the same laws, usages and customs 
have been produced in the two localities by independent invention, then, as 
has just been said, it is direct evidence of a oneness of will, faith and prac- 
tice. And, on the other hand, if this difference, though it be very slight 
was carried from the North to the South, or from the South to the North, or 
from a foreign system to either, the smaliness of the change it has suffered 
in transplanting is still evidence of the like nature of the soil wherever it is 
found. We might reasonably expect that Baptists of like faith when placed 
under widely different circumstances of locality, climate, and so forth, should 
develop very various usages and customs, and we know by evidence that 
they actually do so; but, nevertheless, it strikingly illustrates the extent of 
the homogenousness of the Baptists of the world ; so much so that it is 
really difficult to find among the Baptists of two widely separated nations, 
usages and customs, a single one of which something closely analogous may 
not be found in both. This is the more striking T,vhen we consider that 
these churches have no legislative tribunal to formulate a uniform system 
of faith and practice. In Baptist church jurisprudence there is a law of 
unity above all the enactments of humanly devised codes —the same through- 
out the world — the same at all times — it is the law written by the finger of 
God upon the hearts of all Ba^ptists everywhere. It holds the churches 
together by a sort of code of laws self-existing and antecedent to all human 
law. It points out the origin of the churches, it is the very genius of their 
unity and continuity, it has been and will ever be at the organization of 
every true church of Christ. This something which binds this great family 
of churches together is the law which is superior to man and made for him. 
The true law of God's churches is not the work of man ; he receives, but 
does not create it, even when he submits to it, it is not his own, it is beyond 
and above him, it is the divine law. 

There is yet another important, though often ignored, mode of replenish- 
ing a system of church ethics, without the aid of ecclesiastical legislation, 
which is the adoption of the opinions of eminent text-book writers and com- 
mentators. In any system of law where legislation is absolutely prohibited, 
like that of the Baptists, the works of text-book writers of repute become 
scarcely less authoritative on the state of the law than the Bible itself, 
especially when the writers are of considerable antiquity, and wrote without 
any intent to settle a question then being agitated. And it cannot be 
doubted that the constant authority such writers have seems to gather 



160 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

strength with every fresh writer who is considered orthodox and loyal to 
the principles of Baptist church government. 

It is not only right but necessary, in order to obtain the clearest possible 
insight into the subject of ecclesiastical ethics in its bearings upon govern- 
ment, first to consider it absolutely, that is in its essentials, by which it wholly 
diflers from all other things, for which purpose we must examine it when 
at the commencement of its existence it takes its start, and then view it 
when at the highest degree of perfection peculiar to itself. If we omit this, 
we shall obtain but indistinct ideas, leadiug to a thousand erroneous conclu- 
sions. But having done this, it is equally important to view the same sub- 
ject in all its transitions, through which it is affiliated and joined, in the 
various directions, to other things. By doing this we can alone discover its 
position and bearings and find out how great an agent rules of religious 
ethics are in Christ's household. To apply them requires but the common- 
est kind of common sense. When common sense is enlightened, well versed 
and practised, it is the most useful talent that can be applied in the practical 
operations of church government. No church member can dispense with a 
degree of common sense, not only as being requisite to discern the nature 
and workings of the apostolic churches, how they started and took their rise, 
but likewise to enable us to institute a comparison between those .early 
churches and Baptist churches of this day, and to apply all rules of ethics 
to them whether scientific or Scriptural. The more we have to do with this 
peculiar kind of church polity, the more important common sense becomes. 
We need it always to apply our rules, to fix the proper limits, beyond which 
any rule transcends its own spirit, to select the proper ones to apply to par- 
ticular cases, and to discover the wants of the churches, all of which, how- 
ever, requires much cultivation and practice. 

Therefore the queistion narrows itself down to this: Are the fixed and 
fundamental rules concerning the relations of men to each other, observed 
in Baptist churches, such as follow from the nature of Christian men, organ- 
ized into an organic church under the laws of the gospel, or are they arbi- 
trary inventions as they are in every other system of church government ? 
Is the distinction between the customary laws of a Baptist church and the 
written systems of others in any way inconsistent with the substantial natu- 
ralness of both, not to say anything about the Scripturalness of written 
church laws ? Can lawyers trace the evolution and progress of civil laws as 
practiced by courts of justice from the necessary relations of civil society? 
Are there any analogies between these civil or common laws, which follow 
from the nature and conduct of men associated. in Baptist churches? We 
contend that the analogy is plain and can be traced with unerring certainty, 
and along with the Scriptures themselves these ecclesiastical common laws 
form the basis of Baptist church jurisprudence. If the Scriptures furnish 
that lav/ in all its minutia, it should be observed with religious fidelity. If 
the Scriptures do not go into detail, but leave many things undetermined, 
there must be a resort somewhere else for a rule of action. If customary 
law does not furnish a rule then in this respect, we must all turn Methodists, 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 151 

Presbyterians and Catholics, who feel at liberty to legislate for the govern- 
ment of their churches. 

Now the first condition of the primitive churches just being set up for 
government was mutual love and confidence, and unless there was such a 
thing as love and confidence, individual men and churches would have been 
unable to shape for themselves any course of conduct in which they might 
have to depend on the assistance and co-operation of their brethren, acting 
without a definite rule to guide them. A natural constancy in the custom- 
ary actions of members of a church endeavoring for the first time to evolve 
a rule of law, is a preliminary step towards the constancy and uniformity 
of their actions in relation to each other. And if the same action is natu- 
rally performed together by different persons in the same church for a great 
length of time, that circumstance alone gives it consideration. Joint action 
suggests the possibility of concerted action, and in the future discourages 
and discredits isolated action. That habit is formed, not only of doing 
certain things appertaining to church government, but of seeing every one 
else do them, and any member who does differently jars on the established 
sense of fitness in the rest. Even outside of the church men act together in 
certain ways led by common sympathies and interests, but being united in a 
church of Christ brings fresh necessities and obligations with it. Estab- 
lished relations in a church by making them more complicated, suggest, 
while at the same time they restrain, personal impulses such as would mar 
the whole. The nature of an action is thus modified by its joint perform- 
ance becoming customary, as that of an indifferent omission is modified 
when it comes to appear as a departure from established usage. What Bap- 
tists ought to do under the positive laws of the gospel is what they always 
have done, and they do it, and thereby it becomes a law unto them and they 
thereby become a law unto themselves, so long as it continues to apply to any 
matter before them. 

Primitive Baptist church common law, which sprang up before the writ- 
ing and compiling of the New Testament Scriptures, consisted in doing the 
bidding of the apostles, who delivered their instructions orally to the 
churches as they organized them, and, after they passed away, it consisted in 
doing what every one else rightly did in pursuance to their teachings; but 
so far as every one readily and naturally does the same thing in reference 
to church government, it is not by conscious voluntary submission to an 
external or written rule, but from a common internal impulse, which may 
be called necessary, since it is effective to perform the functions of a written 
rule, as well as it is natural, and as apt, and more so, to be Scriptural as 
one that is written by the ecclesiastical legislator. True church law does 
not originate in a conspiracy on the part of ecclesiastics, assembled for that 
purpose, to coerce the churches by formulating a written rule, any more 
than in a conspiracy on the part of individuals in a church to coerce the 
church ; and while church organizations are wholly voluntary and based on 
a common interest and inclination, there is no need for positive legislation, 
aside from the Scriptures, to enjoin practices which are followed as of course, 



152 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

as readily without it as with it. The habit of following a custom creates a 
secondary, subjective disposition to go on doing so, if it proves to be Scrip- 
tural, which is in its nature conscious, and lislt as a restraint upon the 
natural liberty of absolute indifference. But, doubtless, when this peculiar 
kind of law was first generated, it was not the idea that certain things must 
be done in the church because they were done by the church. If this had 
been the case, the action would have become only habitual to do it, whence 
a secondary, artificial difficulty would have been felt in substituting any 
other kind of action, till motives of a new class had come into force. The 
majority in wdiich the sovereignty of the church resides, after feeling the 
same kind of original impulse, experienced the same kind of difficulty in 
ceasing to act upon it in particular cases while its general force subsisted, 
and the same necessity for ceasing if a change in the conditions made the 
old act, which needed to be innovated upon, uneasy or undesirable. The 
mere cessation of an old motive does not give a feeling of obligation, unless 
a habit formed under its influence survives the change of circumstances, 
which makes its maintenance useless or inconvenient; but if a present 
motive for acting in one way comes into collision with the formed habit of 
acting in another, obedience to the habit, if it proves the strongest, is 
attended by a consciousness of necessity, moral or religious, that may be 
quite independent of reason or expediency. In other words, custom and 
religion are identified, and made to sanction each other's ordinances. 

But it is not the purpose in this treatise to discourse about religion. Tlie 
history about Baptist church government is the history of relations between 
individuals, as they are members of churches, and the churches themselves, 
whose conduct and attitude toward each other is liable to be modified by 
the fact that they are conscious of the relation and the obligations, which 
supply new motives for the maintenance or modification of the relation. It 
is a matter worth noting here, that the stability of the relations between the 
various members of Baptist churches is proportioned to the simplicity of 
those relations. These relations, considered objectively, while it occurs to 
no one to modify them, or to conceive them as modifiable, form the status of 
the membership, who are classified as equals naturally by their own acquies- 
cence in the position allotted to them by their mutual covenant. Among 
Baptists, early ecclesiastical law is admitted to rest on covenant, not status ; 
it begins by consecrating or affirming that which already is, for facts precede 
reason and legislation, even from immediate self-interest. 

The explanation of what is meant by a church covenant becomes clear if 
we consider that a covenant is a deliberate engagement to do or to forbear 
to do on certain conditions, or for certain considerations, and implies the 
distinct conception of two independent, voluntary actions, and the possibility 
of performing either or both ; conceptions which, it need hardly be said, will 
not be formed until experience, that is previous action, has furnished mate- 
rial for them. Every lawyer knows that law, as a record of facts, is posterior 
to the facts themselves. Baptist churches must have been constituted by 
somebody and somehow, before Baptist church jurisprudence in all its 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 153 

perfection could exist, otherwise it could never have been generated and 
developed. 

The chief difference between Baptist church customary law or common 
law and ecclesiastical legislation is that Baptists conscientiously make their 
actual and every-day practice the standard of right or obligation, while the 
followers of ecclesiastical legislation follow the utterance of an embodied 
authority enjoining something which the member who is to obey it does not 
know or imagine that he would have done without the written injunction. 
On the part of ecclesiastical legislation, law is, ideally, the expression of 
what would be the general will if the self-individuality of the church could 
be suddenly submitted and intensified, so as to become at once aware of all 
its own strongest impulses, and of the adjustments and limitations necessary 
for reconciling and harmonizing their notions of church government. Only, 
as the organ by which the church expresses this will is itself subject to con- 
crete human infirmities, that is self-interest, books of discipline and ecclesi- 
astical digests are no more infallible than Baptist church customs and usages 
are omniscient, and to secure a tolerable practical approach towards the 
ideal system of church law ; that is to say, the apostolical system, the intel- 
ligence of the church needs to be consciously turned towards the considera- 
tion of its own real organic needs and wishes which is the only standard of 
right, and which the ecclesiastical legislator may otherwise ignore, for want 
of a sufficient present sense of their material wants. Good ecclesiastical cus- 
toms when they have been evolved by actual experience embody the indi- 
vidual ideas of what each individual considers as just and Scriptural ; good 
ecclesiastical written laws, if it were lawful and possible to write them, de- 
mand a higher intellectual and spiritual intuition which none but the apos- 
tles ever had. Denominational or inter-church customs may be strong 
enough to control the erratic or naturally rebellious impulses of free and 
independent Baptists, but a class such as we find in other systems, having 
common interests not identical with those of the rest of the same church may 
form a custom of its own, incompatible with older customary rights and 
privileges. If the passions and interests of individuals come into collision 
they either fight out their quarrel as Baptists do, or compromise it, as it 
were instinctively ; but when the conflict is between the different interests or 
usages of persons, instead of individuals, all standing upon an equality as in 
Baptist churches, the power of automatic adjustment or adaptation breaks 
down, and the scattered motives to mutual concessions, existing in post- 
apostolic systems have to be summed up and brought home to the conscious- 
ness of all alike in the official sanction of a written law. The supposed 
growing want in Baptist church government of some central authority, such 
as we see in other systems, to decide betvreen the conflicting interests among 
individuals in the churches, contributed as much as any other cause to the 
strengthening of the authority of customary law to rule the church. The 
lawful authority of these laws increased the more because there was no avow- 
able class interest concerned in resisting them, while every dawning custom 
that could claim to be Scriptural and innocent or useful or advantageous 
was eager to receive its sanction. 



154 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

The process of allotting a church into classes, such as clergy and laity, or 
any other division is just as double-sided and unecclesiastical as any other 
irrational political development, and the historical steps in the, process can 
be summed up in the simple generalization which makes all written law and 
government alike the mere expression of the will of those who assume to be 
the rulers of the whole church. The most obvious difficulty in the way of 
supposing ecclesiastical law to be made by the arbitrary will of ecclesiastics, 
is that no merely natural difference between church members living in a 
church upon terms of equality and in simplicity is sufficient to enable these 
church dignitaries to terrorize and control the wills of the churches. This 
rule and control has to be built up gradually, and with the consent or assist- 
ance of those whose subsequent obedience to the power they have helped to 
form, is assumed by an arbitrary theory and is naturally reluctant and only 
extorted by force. It will scarcely be maintained that the apostolic 
churches subsisted without law and rules till such time as they had suc- 
ceeded in educating a class of priestly potentates, and in providing them 
with followers in such force as to make the mere announcement of their wills 
the law of the churches. This kind of law will be obeyed if their blind fol- 
lowers believe in their power of compelling obedience, but among Baptists 
their obedience is determined by their opinion about the authority of such 
men to rule them, as the real extent of that authority is determined by their 
readiness to acquiesce or not in its exercise. 

More interest has always been felt by Baptists in the specific laws of the 
churches, than in their government, for unscriptural laws betray themselves 
more easily than bad government and more frequently become the subject 
of contention. Baptists see in the law they are called upon to execute the 
record of what is and has been done. But others who feel themselves at 
liberty to make written laws for the churches address themselves to the task 
of laying down beforehand what ought and must be done ; so that among 
Baptists, in practice, respect for their customary law always means respect 
for the laws that already exist, and not so much for what it ought to be. 
They verify their interpretations of a church law by an unconscious refer- 
ence to the individual opinions of each member as to what is the true rule 
of action, or by their own unimpassioned judgment. The dictates of a cus- 
tom are felt to have the force of law whenever the customary motive is 
recognized as being properly dominant as a rule. The regularity with 
which men seek to reduce their actions to a rule has its cause in the con- 
stant pressure of an orderly system of things in favor of systematic adjust- 
ment, concert, and co-operation amongst persons united under a church 
covenant to act in concert in furtherance of a common end. The reason 
why Baptist churches are governed by these unwritten laws is, that men of 
the same faith and order under the same circumstances act in substantially 
the same w^ay ; the motive to do so is not only felt, but it is felt as always 
present, laying its injunctions on the will, and acquiescence in its power 
grows into a habit. 

The proof of Baptist church common law is the fact that all the churches 



OB, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 155 

observe it, and the philosophy of precedents is simply the assumption that 
whatever has been habitually done heretofore was done for good reason and 
because it was Scriptural, and will, and ought, therefore, to continue to be 
done until cause positive be shown for its omission, when such cause, not 
having existed in the preceding case, the precedent ceases to be binding. 
Early Baptist church laws are rather declaratory of existing usage than 
imperative as to future practice ; in other words, usage is the evidence of 
the existing custom. It may plausibly be concluded, in all matters indif- 
ferent, not involving fundamental principles, that only those customs will 
permanently prevail amongst Baptists which they freely choose to observe — 
that is, such as the common denominational interest and inclination approves. 
Hence the most reasonable and useful compilation of Baptist church laws 
will be those which state with accuracy the formulas that include all the 
adjudged or recorded cases, or give the soundest or most Scriptural gene- 
ralization of the real practice of the churches. The completest attempt at 
such a work is that recently published by Rev. Edward T. Hiscox, D.D., 
published by the American Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia, 
which should be found upon the shelf of every Baptist in America, entitled, 
"A New Baptist Church Directory." This excellent compilation of Bap- 
tist church law and doctrine is not what the author has himself made it, but 
it is only a faithful recital of what the law already is. These laws never 
could have been compiled before there was a consensus of usage respecting 
them. It is not a fruitless search after church law, which does not yet 
exist, but a record of what has been evolved by the churches in the past. 
It is not binding upon the churches only in so far as it is intrinsically 
Scriptural and voluntarily acceptable to the churches, and is as much a 
standard authority as Blackstone's or Kent's commentaries upon the com- 
mon law. are authorities in courts of justice, and is entitled to as much 
respect. He who would attempt to collect and record the customs and 
usages of Baptist churches should be the apostle of the truth, and not the 
inventor of rules or systems. 

The absence of a report of all adjudged cases in our churches is a great 
defect in Baptist church jurisprudence. It has led to a nearly arbitrary 
exposition of the rules and regulations by each church as each separate case 
arose. The almost total want of respect for church precedents may be 
traced to the fact that there has never been any attention paid to their com- 
pilation and preservation. This species of law so important in our civil 
jurisprudence has lost much of its force and authority by reason of this fact. 
In civil law judicial precedents act to a considerable extent, as a check upon 
the conduct of judges. As it is necessary that there should be rules to 
restrain private individuals, so it is also necessary that there should be some 
kind of law to restrain the court, and precedents constitute that law. The 
respect for cases which have already been adjudged and published, although 
it should never be carried so far as to render them absolutely binding, pre- 
vents any marked or habitual departure from the law of the land. The 
legal profession are apt to be keenly attentive to both the motives and the 



166 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

reasons of the bench, when it undertakes to overthrow a decision which has 
grown to be a principle ; and in this way a system of responsibility is created, 
which can only be brought about by collecting and making known these 
adjudications. The'respect for adjudicated cases becomes a habit; they are 
of general notoriety, because they are in print, and any departure from them 
is viewed with extreme jealousy. 

The analogies and comparisons here made correspond roughly to the dis- 
tinctions met with by lawyers almost everywhere between written and 
unwritten law, the latter of which is naturally preferred until cases become 
overwhelmingly numerous, just as written and unwritten laws are allowed to 
remain undigested till the extreme limits of the libraries and lawyers' and 
judges' memories have been reached. The position of him who undertakes 
to systematize and compile the unwritten laws of the churches is indeed a 
critical one. The unwritten law, as it has been evolved by the churches, 
supplies a standard for itself to be tried by, and unless the commentary upon 
it is intrinsically orthodox, and is such that Baptists can and do spon- 
taneously accept, the law and the commentator lose their authority altogether. 
When this peculiar kind of law exists it is what it is, not by the w^ill or 
arbitrary command of the ecclesiastical legislator or the commentator, but 
by the necessity of its own peculiar nature, and arises by a logical necessity. 
The laws of Baptist churches are only the record of the practice of those 
churches, but it does not conduce to clearness or accuracy of thinking to call 
every uniformity in church government a law, because the real uniformities 
observed in this kind of government are distinguished, or rather distinguish- 
able, in practice, according to what we find to be the cause, or constant con- 
ditions of their occurrence, yet they have their importance in making up the 
system. Rational Baptist church law, as it is attempted to be compiled by 
the commentator, cannot pretend to do more than state the rules of conduct 
normally followed by the normal or rational members of the churches; 
because the normal members obey the laws of the church because these 
laws on the whole represent the permanent will of themselves and their 
contemporaries concerning the conditions of relationship amongst themselves. 

Once that true church law has generated in the churches, it bears within 
itself something vital, divine and immortal, which never more perishes in 
its entirety. Discords in the churches, and vile passions, may for a time 
crush it under foot, may mutilate it under the sway of ignorance and pre- 
judice ; its fruits may be retarded for ages, but the hand of Providence is 
full of ages, and, at the destined time, the living idea of which the seed has 
been spread and multiplied, even by the storms, it bursts forth at once, and 
is conformed to the divine model of Christ's churches. 

It has long been observed that the practice of a science always precedes 
the science itself. And with Baptist church jurisprudence, the rudimentary 
principles and general rules it demonstrates were practiced long before the 
existence of the science underlying this peculiar form of ecclesiastical gov- 
ernment was ever suspected. And in ord-er to thoroughly understand the 
beauty of the system, it is necessary to follow out its philosophy, for no 



OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 157 

system of laws, if isolated, can be understood. A system cannot be com- 
prehended until we know all the consequences which have actually followed 
its development, and which it is the business of the historian to trace from 
it in the application of principles. 

It has been heretofore noticed that it is only with spiritually progressive 
bodies customary law has any affinity. Nothing is more remarkable in this 
age than to look around us and see the extreme fewness of spiritually pro- 
gressive churches. Take, as a fair example, the English establishment, or 
Episcopal church. In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult 
for a " churchman " to brhig thoroughly home to himself the truth that the 
spiritual inertia, which hangs like a mill-stone about the neck of their 
establishment, is attributable to the part which ecclesiastical legislation has 
performed in their system. And what may be said of this people, may be 
applied with equal force to all such bodies as have reduced their form of 
church government to a written code. If Baptists could at a glance see the 
ponderous load of irrational absurdities under which these organizations are 
groaning and pining away, in consequence of ecclesiastical legislation, and 
the departures from true church law and government, they could thereby be 
made fully to appreciate the beauty of Baptist church polity. It is true 
that all these Pedo-Baptist denominations have never shown any particular 
desire that their bodies should be further developed and made to conform 
to the primitive models, since the moment when external completeness was 
given them at their organization, and their written codes were first com- 
pleted. One set of written laws has been violently overthrown, and super- 
seded by another. Here and there a code of canons pretending to a super- 
natural origin, that has been greatly extended and distorted to meet human 
views by the perversity of sacerdotal legislators and commentators, has 
sprung up; but only in the system of Baptist church law the world has 
ever seen anything like the gradual grow^th of a body of church law, with- 
out the withering influence of ecclesiastical legislation. 

It is true that there has been in many instances, as in the Methodist 
church, a material external development, but instead of the growth expand- 
ing the laws in harmony with the true genius of the primitive churches, 
their laws have limited their development, hence it is easy to see the end to 
which they will ultimately drift— to that of caste. The study of true church 
government in its primitive conditions affords us a clue to the point at which 
their development stopped. We see that they have not yet been able to 
pass beyond a stage which occurs in all their histories, that is, the stage at 
which a true rule of church law can be distinguished from a plain precept 
of religion. AVe see this in their practices of infant and adult sprinkling 
for baptism. This they do not because it is Biblical, but because this divine 
ordinance has been perverted by ecclesiastical legislation whereby the sacred 
text has been made to mean something aside from its letter and spirit. 
Their pernicious practices have educated many of them up to the idea that 
the transgression of their man-made law should be punished by both civil 
and ecclesiastical penalties. In the more recent denominations, this point, 



158 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

it is true, has been past, but their progress seems to have been arrested 
because their written laws are co-extensive with all the ideas they are capa- 
ble of evolving. 

"When a domain of science, such as true ecclesiastical jurisprudence, has 
been insensibly cultivated by the uninterrupted practice of many ages, it 
offers to the present generation of Baptists a rich inheritance. It is not 
merely the mass of achieved truths which have descended to us, but every 
attempted direction of intellectual powers, all the endeavors of the past, 
whether they have been fruitful of successes or failures, avail us as guides, 
as warnings, and thus we are able to labor with the united strength of the 
centuries that are gone. To abandon this vantage ground of our position is 
to repudiate the most precious inheritance of Baptist church polity, the 
community of scientific convictions, and that continued living progress with- 
out which our system would long since have degenerated into a dead letter. 

We have perhaps almost a superstitious regard for the method in which 
Baptist church law has been built up out of actual cases and principles, as 
distinguished from the speculations and entanglements into which those of 
other systems plunge themselves by a process of legislation. The conception 
of a written constitution and discipline for a church seems to belong to a 
range of ideas not found in the Bible, or among the apostles, and is more 
recent and advanced. The principle seems to have been fully recognized in 
the outset, that it was indispensably necessary that a rule should be estab- 
lished, if there was no Bible law applicable to the matter in hand. There 
being no Scripture authority given to resolve the rule into a written com- 
mand, the mode of deciding all questions was left to the intelligence and 
skill of those charged with the administration of church affairs. 

We have seen that in those immutable principles which are fundamental 
in their nature no man or church can impose anything that can alter any 
part of the institution, or make a change or variety in that which is of 
divine appointment, for the effect of these things depends wholly upon the 
will of Christ, and we know nothing but what we see reflected in the record, 
and, therefore, we must with simplicity and obedience apply ourselves to 
practice what we have received, as having nothing else to guide us. 

But in all matters voluntary and indifferent in their nature where there is 
no Scripture rule, the usages of a church introduce a law, so far that we can- 
not recede from it without some probable cause. If the Scripture has not 
interposed a law in the particular case we must keep the customs and usages 
of the churches ; and as all who attempt to disintegrate the immutable laws 
are to be restrained, so are all they that disregard the customs of the 
churches. But, above all things, individual isolated opinions are not to be 
taken up by customs, and reduced to practice, because custom is no war- 
ranty for opinions. Besides this when an opinion is offered only by the hand 
of an isolated custom, it is commonly a sign of a bad cause, and that there 
is nothing else to be said for it ; for customs proper must gradually grow up 
and graflually become assented to universally before they arise to the dignity 
of customs proper. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 159 

If the churches differ in the handling of indifferent matters where there is 
no Scri})ture rule, it is allowable to observe either, or neither, as it may suit 
each individual church. But in such cases as where several churches have 
several usages, every church ought to follow her own custom, and all her 
members to obey it. Yet, notwithstanding every church is tied to her own 
customs, it is allowable to adopt by common consent any other good custom 
of another church ; and in going from one church to another keep the cus- 
tom of that church, if you will neither give or receive offense ; do as that 
church does where you happen to be, unless you are persuaded that thereby 
you infract a divine commandment. In which case no custom is binding, no 
matter how venerable by age. 

A custom is obligatory by being a custom in the particular church to 
w^hich we belong. In other words, no man can go from one church to an- 
other and carry along with him the customs of the church he left behind. 
The customs he practiced in the church from which he goes may be whole- 
some and the best, but he cannot obtrude them upon the church except by 
their consent, and should it be adopted at all it is for the reason that it is 
useful, and not because it is practiced in another church, otherwise one 
church could make rules for another, which is contrary to the genius of 
Baptist church government. In such cases we can say with Paul : But if 
any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, ndthcr the churches 
of God. But if a divine commandment is urged to take the place of a cus- 
tom heed should be given, for when the law of God is called upon, although 
there be a custom in the church against Scripture it is to beheld for naught, 
for when the law of God is alive custom is dead, because custom can only 
take life and spring into existence when there is no law, and when there is 
a law actually called upon, a custom to the contrary is a direct evil, if not a 
heresy, and is that against which the Scripture is intended to guard, and that 
which the Scripture did intend to remedy. In all post-apostolic religious 
communities the custom of sprinkling, instead of baptism, prevails. In all 
cases like this w'e should stand to the law, not to the custom, because the law 
is still in force, and is actually intended to prevail according to the mind of 
Christ, and is more agreeable with the practice, the laws and usages of the 
primitive churches, and to the practice of Christ and his apostles ; for that 
came by the laws of Christ, this by the customs of men. 

If the reason why customs were instituted may be known, and being 
known, if it appear manifestly that there is a perpetual necessity for them, 
then are those customs perpetual, unless they cease to be effectual for the 
purpose for which they were first instituted. Because when a custom ceases 
to be available and useful for that purpose, the continuance of it must of 
necessity be superfluous. It is very apparent to Baptists how that some 
customs have done great good which afterwards when time has changed the 
ancient course of things they grow to be hurtful, or not so greatly profitable 
or necessary. If then the end for which a custom is provided be perpet- 
ually necessary, no doubt but that every such custom ought forever to 
remain unchangeable. Whether Christ be the author of a law, by authoriz- 



160 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

ing the exercise of the power by which the law was made, or by deliveriDg 
it ready made from himself, it thereby becomes immutable. So, for us to 
change that which Christ has established, is inexcusable pride and presump- 
tion. The laws of the Jewish priesthood and ritualistic ceremonies came 
from God. Moses committed them all to writing, and they stand there 
to-day. Post-apostolic sects draw therefrom their ideas of priest-craft and 
ritualistic ceremonies. But Baptists say that since the end for which that 
law was ordained is now fulfilled, past and gone, it has no longer any foroe. 
It is abolished and repealed by reason of the decease of the end for which it 
was given. 

Many things have been changed from the old dispensation and changed 
for the better. That which succeeds the old, as being now better, would not 
have been changed were it not for a different occasion that called for it. 
In these cases men did not presume to change God's ordinances, but Christ, 
the founder of the churches, made the changes. For man to have innovated 
the old system it would have been presumptuous, as it would now be a hein- 
ous and an impious sacrilege to abrogate the new. Touching points funda- 
mental, as, for example, church sovereignty, independence, and equality, and 
the rule by the majority, they have existed since the first hour tliat there 
was a church in the world, and they will to the last remain the same. ^ But 
as to matters indifferent, and not of substance, they are for the most part of 
another nature. There is no reason why we should esteem it necessary to 
do the same things ; matters of faith and doctrine, and the more important 
principles of church government and polity, are constant ; of customs they 
are changeable in their nature, and are such which each church may from 
time to time adopt, alter or abolish as there is occasion, and to do which will 
not destroy or impair the foundations upon which rests the fabric of Baptist 
church government. They are flexible and may be differently established 
and quite abolished without violating either the letter or spirit of the Scrip- 
tures. While the immutable laws proper are unalterable and indestructible 
and are so just and necessary at all times, and in all places, that no ecclesi- 
astical authority on earth can either change or abolish them, for they are 
grounded and rooted and nurtured in the Holy Scriptures. They are such 
which being taken away the church, as a church of Christ, fails, and is 
utterly dissolved as a building whose foundation is destroyed. They are 
like the laws of the Medes and Persians, they can suffer no change. But as 
to things which belong to discipline and practice, the churches have author- 
ity to make customs, as we read in the apostles' times they did. 

When the Scriptures do not interpose the churches have their liberty, and 
in those things indifferent which the apostolic churches prescribed they did 
with liberty, because rules of order are as variable as the tactics of an army, 
and have a transient and variable sense ; in all these things there are no in- 
flexible customs for the churches, although we did know what the first 
churches practiced, for they did it with liberty, and left that same liberty to 
succeeding churches. If inflexible rules in matters indifferent had been 
necessary, they would have been clearly taught it, and if they had, there is 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 161 

no reason to believe but that such rules would have been made a part of the 
written record ; but if at first these indifferent rules varied, they had no 
common coherence of principle, and therefore thej had no necessity of rec- 
ord. In the unchangeable laws we have unity and necessity, authority and 
obedience, but when we go beyond this, we find variety and liberty. All 
those laws which the apostles received from Christ in which they were min- 
isters to all ages, thus conveying the mind of Christ to all generations to 
come, this was to bind forever ; for Christ only is our lawgiver, and what he 
said was to last forever ; in all those things which did not come authorita- 
tively from him, the early disciples could not be lawgivers, therefore, what- 
ever they ordered by their own wisdom, was to abide as long as the reason 
or necessity therefor did abide, but still with the same liberty with which 
they appointed it. For of all men the early disciples and the apostles would 
be the last to put snares upon Christian liberty or fetters upon the churches. 

Of the same nature is the time and manner of the setting a man apart to 
the work of the ministry, the ordination and call of a pastor, his installa- 
tion, his term of service, the church's time and place of meetings, the recep- 
tion and dismissal of members, their discipline, the time and occasion of the 
administration of the ordinances, the conduct of the secular affairs of the 
churches, and the exercise of the ordinary parliamentary rules for their gov- 
ernment. For all of this being done in the apostles' times without written 
rules, and immediately received by all the churches everywhere, and ever 
since were governed in this way, it is to be concluded to be a law of Christ 
which the apostles conveyed with intention to oblige all Christendom ; not 
only because the apostles could not make a law to succeeding ages in these 
minute things, or at least they did not exercise such authority, but because 
it was against the will of Christ that the commandments of men should be 
taught for either doctrine or practice, and it was against church liberty and 
Christian conscience, that a lasting necessity should, by men, be put upon 
anything indifferent, and succeeding churches would thereby be straightened 
in their liberty which Christ had given them, and in which they were bound 
to stand fast. 

Hence, there is not in the world a greater presumption than for men, or 
churches, to undertake to prescribe a written code of " overtures," " deliver- 
ances," or " discipline," unless by Christ they had been authorized to do so. 
For these innate divine laws, written upon the tablets of the hearts of God's 
children, with his own hand, are the sources and foundations of the princi- 
ples underlying the government and polity of his true churches in all matters 
where the Bible is silent. They need not be written to be valid. They are 
indestructible and everlasting, unalterable and immutable. 

Here, then, we have the germ or the rudiment of Baptist church jurispru- 
dence and polity. This is unquestionably the way our system had its first 
beginning. Unless this be the case it is difficult to understand how it could 
ever have escaped from its swaddling clothes and taken its first steps towards 
its present development. Its peculiar characteristic is that it apparently 
formed itself, and cannot be traced back to the determination of the will of 
11 



162 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

any one man, or the decree of any council, convention or other body of men. 
It was never thought of, however, as being founded on quite untested prin- 
ciples. The idea was from the very outset that such principles as were left 
undetermined by the letter of the Scriptures, underlay the inspired writings, 
and had to be looked at through them. In fact, true church law is grounded, 
rooted, and nurtured in the Bible, and built and cemented by actual expe- 
rience. In tracing its historical development down the line of time, we will 
see no ecclesiastical legislator formulating a human code, or creed ; we will 
hear no sound of edge-tool or hammer, or the confused noise of the work- 
men, but the materials and all the necessary conditions will be present to 
evolve the law whenever the workmen are called by the Lord to do his work. 

Hence, the body of our church law is properly termed unwritten, common, 
or customary laws; their original institution and authority not being set 
down in writing, but receive the binding power and force of laws by long 
and universal usage, and their universal reception throughout all the Baptist 
churches of the earth. Hence, the absolute validity of every church usage, 
which goes to make up our church polity, depends upon its having been 
universally received and acted upon, " Time out of mind,'' or, rather, " Tiiiie 
whereof the memory of man run7ieth not to the contrary.'' It is being grounded 
in the Scriptures, and it is their antiquity which gives them their force and 
validity. They contain not the wisdom of a single age or any particular 
age, but the accumulated wisdom of all the ages. They are held and re- 
garded with a reverence second only to that entertained for the Holy Scrip- 
tures, and are made of equally binding authority with, when they do not 
contradict the sacred text, for there can be no difference whether the churches 
declare their assent to a rule by formally reducing it to writing, or by a uni- 
form course of acting upon it. 

Take from the Baptists of the earth the Scriptures, the law-book of the 
churches, and it would be like sweeping away the pillar of cloud which 
guided the wanderers of old by day through the wilderness — take from them 
the customary law and it would be like extinguishing the pillar of fire which 
guided them by night. The one is as essential as the other. As in the for- 
mer days God chose the Ark of the Covenant as a repository for the preser- 
vation of the Ten Commandments, written with his own finger, so in the 
latter days he chose the receptacle of the Customary Law in which to pre- 
serve and hand down the principles of the government of his true churches 
unchanged and unaltered. Their customs are sacredly held to be as salt to 
jDreserve such truths as are Scriptural, and as lime to neutralize and destroy 
such as are heretical. 

It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that the science of ecclesiasti- 
cal government to which his attention has been called treats only of the rela- 
tions between individuals and churches, having to do with theology or morals 
themselves only in so far as was required for showing how they are liable to 
be affected, favorably or unfavorably, by governmental action of the churches, 
and how the latter is, in turn, liable to be affected by them. These are laws 
•that could not have been studied with advantage until the science of those 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 163 

relations between individuals and cliurclies should first have been fully mas- 
tered. By their study it is that we are enabled to understand the process by 
means of which it had been provided that the higher attributes of both in- 
dividuals and churches should be stimulated into action. That it has now, 
and for the first time in the history of Baptist churches, become possible 
advantageously to so enter on this important study is due to the fact that our 
Baptist churches have, under the blessings of God, attained such full develop- 
ment within tbe past few years. Upon this development the foundation of 
this science must rest which is destined to furnish, in its turn, the foundation 
on which the apex of the edifice of a more perfect structure may at no dis- 
tant period be constructed. For a long period in the past our eminent 
authors have been laboring to that end, puzzling themselves with metaphy- 
Bical discussions, and that the laws of relations in church government have 
no foundation other than that of crude assumptions on which to rest. True 
church government could no more have been constructed in advance of the 
development of the churches than the history of a secular government could 
now be profitably studied in advance of the establishment of that government. 

If Baptist church government is to be vindicated from the aspersions cast 
upon it by those who knew nothing of its internal workings, and is ever to 
be erected into a science with its own appropriate methods and limitations, 
the foundation, of the objections to it must be investigated and their real 
value strictly assessed. One reason which accounts for the unscientific aspect 
under which the government and laws of Baptist churches usually present 
themselves is that it very rarely happens, or has happened, that conscious 
attention to the true character of ecclesiastical problems, to their difficulties, 
and to the modes of their solution, is aroused in any church till long after a 
practical solution of some kind has been instinctively resorted to, and a con- 
siderable iidvance in the art of administration achieved. By laying open a 
field of thought which is peculiarly Baptistic, and which has in an eminent 
degree, both a scientific and philosophical interest, I flatter myself that I 
have contributed, however httle, towards giving public attention to a subject 
which needs to be studied more thoroughly by all lovers of the churches of 
our Lord and Saviour. The instruction, ofiered by this interesting study 
teaches us that we should not depend upon others, but that we should search 
in the rich resources of our own literature and history, our own form of 
ecclesiastical polity and our ow^n institutions for the materials on which to 
construct a Baptist literature upon this subject. 

But it will be said, Why so much theory and so little practice ? It must 
be remembered that in the outset I undertook a treatise upon the theory and 
science of ecclesiastical government and not a compilation of by-laws for the 
use of the churches. Others have undertaken that task and performed it 
well. Story, Kent and Blackstone, the great commentators upon the Ameri- 
can and English common law, did not undertake to alone lay down rules of 
court, but felt called upon to go into the philosophy of the law in general 
that its true genius might be the better understood by those whose life-work 
was to practice it. 



164 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 



CHAPTER VI. 

BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; HOW IT BECOMES TRUSTWORTHY IN 

CHURCH GOVERNMENT THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF THE 

INTERPRETATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

rthis world of uncertainty we believe in part, and prophesy in part, 
and it is certain that this imperfection shall never be done away till 
we shall be translated to a more glorious state. Either we must get truth 
by diving down into the bowels of God's word, and bring it up ourselves, 
or we must take it upon trust from others, unless some other anchor can be 
relied upon, where we may fasten our floating vessels and ride safely upon 
the wide ocean of theology. Therefore, inasmuch as in the very nature of 
things we must defer to the opinions of others it is highly proper that we 
should gather a few of the maxims upon the influence of authority in mat- 
ters of opinion, and as to how far our opinions may be properly influenced 
by the mere authority of others, independently of our own convictions 
founded upon our reason. 

Now, in the discussion of any subject much depends upon a proper defini- 
tion of the terms used in the statement of the question discussed. The term 
opinion as here used seems to be a matter in faith or practice about which 
doubt can reasonably exist, as to which, two persons can, without absurdity, 
think difierently. The interpretation of a plain passage of Scripture which 
is so evident that it needs no further interpretation, or the existence of an 
object before the eyes of two persons, would not be a matter of opinion. 
But when testimony is divided, or uncertain, the existence of a fact may 
become doubtful, and, therefore, a matter of opinion. So the proper rule 
to be adopted where the Scriptures do not go into detail, and we are left in 
our liberty, or any proposition, the contradictory of which can be maintained 
with probability, is a matter of opinion. When any one forms an opinion 
on a question either of speculation or practice, without any appropriate 
process of reasoning, really or apparently leading to that conclusion, and 
without compulsion or inducement of interest, but simply because some 
other person, whom he believes to be a competent judge on the matter, 
entertains that opinion, he is said to have formed his opinion upon authority 
of some other person, or persons. Hence any person who determines our 
belief is an authority. But he who has either the ability or inclination to 
study a question for himself and draws his own conclusions, his opinion does 
not rest upon authority. He who believes upon authority, entertains the 
opinion simply because it is entertained by a person who appears to him 
likely to think correctly on the subject. It would be surprising to those 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 165 

who are unskilled in the civil law to know how many lawyers — seemingly 
successful ones — in their practice base their knowledge of the law upon the 
authority of commentators rather than upon principle. Hence it is rather 
a bad sign of a good lawyer or a judge to see them base their reasonings 
entirely upon authorities or precedents rather than upon the elementary 
principles of jurisprudence which lie at the basis of all law. And I fear 
that these observations are applicable to many Baptists who have not taken 
the pains to study the Scriptures and the fundamental principles of eccle- 
siastical government for themselves. 

In the Baptist form of church polity denominational opinion is a thing of 
the greatest importance, as it is made to bear extensively upon all questions 
of heresy and all manner of disorders both public and private. In all writ- 
ten forms of church government the rule is, by the few, set apart for that 
purpose. Hence the responsibility of keeping all things in order rests upon 
them. But in a free church this responsibility is equally distributed to all 
alike. Those in disorder, whether they be churches or individuals, as soon 
as they have time to reflect, are conscious that they are under the ban of 
denominational opinion. All being free and equal they feel that it is not a 
privileged class that are trampling upon Baptist principles, but their own 
brethren, and they must be subdued and reduced to order through the 
power of public opinion expressed by the denomina-tion. This species of 
authority has a wonderful effect in crumbling the stoutest faction that can 
arise in our polity. The recalcitrants soon feel themselves to be powerless, 
their weapons drop from their hands, they fall off one by one, and seek to 
hide themselves from the view of the denomination. Often have we seen 
repeated attempts, by misguided factions, to violate Baptist principles. In 
every instance the attempt has been abortive. Often we have seen so many 
of our brethren fly off at a tangent, that it seemed that Baptist church gov- 
ernment was at an end, and after a time the whole of them, without the loss 
of one, returned with renewed satisfaction to the wise and salutary maxims 
which had been handed down to them by our Baptist fathers. 

Disguise the fact as we may there is more or less of dogmatical belief in 
every system of religion, \vhether it be the true religion or not. In other 
words the time never was nor will it ever come to pass when men will 
cease to entertain some opinions on trust, and without discussion. In relig- 
ious matters if every one undertook to form all his opinions upon the multi- 
plicity of subjects which go to make up a religious creed, and to seek for 
truth by isolated paths pursued by himself alone, it would follow that no 
considerable number of men would ever unite in any common belief And 
all must conclude that without such common belief no church could exist 
and prosper ; for without ideas held in common, there could be no common 
action, and without common action and a common belief there may be men, 
but there could be no social or orderly church — no oneness of will, faith and 
practice. In order that a church should exist, and the organization should 
prosper, it is required that all the minds of the membership should be ral- 
lied and held together by certain predominant ideas, for Christ prayed that 



166 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

his people should be one ; and this cannot be the case unless each of them 
sometimes draws his opinions from the common source, and consents to 
accept certain matters of belief already formed. If man were forced to 
demonstrate for himself all the truths of which he makes use in a system of 
theology his task would be a difficult and an endless one. There is no Bap- 
tist so profound and of so great parts, but that he believes very many things 
on the faith of others, and supposes a great many more truths than he is 
able to demonstrate. 

An inquiry into this subject will appear the more important when we con- 
sider that a large proportion of the general opinions even of Baptists are 
derived merely from the authority and opinions of others, and are enter- 
tained without any distinct understanding of the evidence on which they 
rest, or the argumentative grounds by which they are supported. An in- 
quiry, therefore, into the legitimate use of the principles of authority, and 
the consequences to which it tends in church government, must be admitted 
to relate to an important subject in its relation to Baptist church jurispru- 
dence. The importance of investigations in church government furnishes 
the ultimate tests for the discovery of truth and the elimination of error. A 
complete and philosophical treatise upon the elementary principles of Bap- 
tist church jurisprudence is, therefore, a powerful instrument for facilitating 
the discovery and confutation of existing errors and the discovery of new 
truths. It thus opens the way to the progressive advancement of true church 
government and development ; as all accurate knowledge of the Scriptures 
must ultimately be derived from sound methods of reasoning and investiga- 
tion. For all religious truths, as well as scientific ones, we must be indebted 
to original researches, carried on according to logical rules. But when these 
truths have been first discovered by original inquiries, and received and 
tested and re-tested by competent judges, it is clearly and chiefly by the in- 
fluence of authority that they are accredited and diflused. When a person 
derives an opinion from the authority of another, the utmost he can hope is 
to adopt the belief of those who, at the time, are the least likely to be in 
error. If this opinion happens to be erroneous, the error is necessarily 
shared by those who receive it upon mere trust, and without any process of 
verification. It must be admitted that the formation of religious opinions 
by and upon the authority of others can never produce any increase or im- 
provement of knowledge, or bring about the discovery of new truths. But 
one of the crowning virtues of the teaching of Baptist church jurisprudence 
is, that truth and not error has ever been accredited ; that when Baptists 
have been led they have been led by safe guides. They have thus profited 
by those processes of reasoning and investigation, which have been carried 
on in accordance with the common law of the gospel and of the churches, 
but which many may not be able to verify for themselves, but take them 
upon trust as coming from those they deem sound in the faith. 

The influence that authoritative opinions have in the formation of a sys- 
tem of faith and practice in ecclesiastical government can readily be seen 
when we consider that the opinions of the young members of the churches 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 167 

just forming church relations are necessarily derived from their parents^ and 
other religious teachers, either without any knowledge,, or with a very imper- 
fect knowledge of the grounds on which they rest. This is the case even 
where the reason is given with the opinion, the belief of the child is often 
determined rather by the authority of the teacher than by the force of the 
argument. Indeed very often the reasons given for an opinion are so nu- 
merous, so complex, and so far above his comprehension that a full explana- 
tion of them would necessarily bewilder rather than enlighten his under- 
standing. Besides, much instruction is conveyed to young Christians, by the 
ministry in particular, in language, the full import of which they cannot 
comprehend. Hence, in indoctrinating young Christians, a reverence and 
respect for the minister, as a minister, and for his precepts, independently of 
his reasons for them, is necessary. Yet it is important to inculcate principles 
and truths, even though the evidence of them is not, and cannot be, fully 
understood. But the transmission of opinions from the elderly to the 
young, in a lump, which results from the doctrine of influence and authority, 
doubtless contains a considerable alloy of evil, inasmuch as it perpetuates 
error in combination with truth, and affords no test for their discrimination. 
To what extent the youth of the churches, when their reason becomes mature, 
and they are emancipated from the control and teaching of their spiritual 
advisers, will modify the opinions with which they have been imbued dur- 
ing their childhood, depends upon circumstances of their subsequent life. 

With regard to the adult members of Baptist churches, comprising a 
large number of persons who have received a liberal education, and have 
leisure and opportunities for study, observation, investigation and reflection, 
the facilities for the independent formation of opinions are greater. But 
many of these are occupied with business and the affairs of active life, which 
either leave little time for reading and thought, or restrict it to one subject, 
and that subject not the one of the most importance to themselves — that is, 
the church and its great mission. Sorry to say, others consume a large por- 
tion of their time in amusements, or, at least, in pursuits of mere curiosity; 
and still more acquiesce, without examination, in the opinions current 
amongst their friends and associates. For instance, a lawyer goes to his 
library and there studies what others have said and believed about a ques- 
tion of science, and takes in on trust ; a physician takes his political opinions, 
a minister takes his medical opinions, all on trust. The difficulty and labor 
of original thought and investigation are great. Even the professed student 
can only hope to explore a portion of the field of knowledge. Hence 
the use of commentaries, manuals, reviews and other works of reference, 
which serve as guides and authorities, and contain results and opinions 
without the minutia by which they were construcfced, and abridge intellect- 
ual labor. 

But since we must necessarily depend upon others in many things for our 
opinions the question is, What are some of the marks of trustworthy authority 
in matters so sacred as that of faith and practice? Now, on looking at the 
qualities which render any one a credible witness in a court of justice to a 



168 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDENCE ; 

matter of fact, we remark that they are of common occurrence. For testimony, 
nothing further is in general required than opportunity of observation, 
ordinary attention and intelligence, and veracity. Almost every person of 
sound mind, who has reached a certain age, is a credible witness as to 
matters which he has observed, and as to which he has no immediate inter- 
est in deception or concealment. The qualities, however, which render a 
person a competent authority in matters of opinion are of rarer occurrence. 
A person whose testimony to a fact would be unimpeachable, might be 
utterly devoid of authority as a guide in matters of faith and practice. 
Besides, a person who in a court of justice is a credible witness for one 
matter of fact, is equally credible to be called for all others which may fall 
under his observation ; whereas no man is equally competent as a guide of 
opinion in all subjects. The first qualification is, that a person to be a safe 
guide in such matters should have devoted much time, study and thought 
to the subject matter, if it be merely speculative and moral; and that if it 
be practical, he should also have had adequate experience respecting it. In 
the second place his mental and spiritual powers must be equal to the task 
of comprehending the subject, and they must be of the kind fitted to it. 
And lastly, he ought to be exempt, as far as possible, from personal interest 
in the matter; or if he is not thus exempt, his honesty and integrity v ought 
to be such as to afibrd a reasonable security against the perversion of his 
opinions by views of his individual advantage. Whenever, therefore, we 
seek to determine who is a competent authority to guide our opinions we 
should select a person who combines these qualifications. 

But in Baptist church jurisprudence some further indications of trust- 
worthy authority, derived from other considerations, are to be taken into 
account. It is a matter of essential importance, with respect to these sacred 
things, that there be an agreement of the persons having the above qualifi- 
cations. If all the able, devoted and pious men, who have diligently 
studied the subject, concur at least in all the fundamental principles, and if 
this consent extends over all the successive generations since the founding 
of the churches, then the authority is at its greatest height. 

This agreement, or consensus of opinion, is analagous to the agreement 
of a multitude of credible witnesses to a fact. If a thousand credible wit- 
nesses agree in their testimony to a fact, the value of their concurrent testi- 
mony is more than a thousand times the value of the testimony of each. 
Therefore, as the agreement in religious opinion among competent judges 
widens its area, the chances of the rectitude of truth increase, and the 
chances of error diminishes, in a perpetually accelerated ratio. When any 
system of ecclesiastical government is in an imperfect, but constantly 
advancing state, the weight of authority increases as the tendency to agree- 
ment begins to exhibit itself; as the lines of independent thought converge; 
as rival opinions coalesce under a common banner ; as factions and sects 
expire ; and as the transmission of erroneous and unverified opinions from 
one generation to another is interrupted by the recognition of newly-ascer- 
tained truths. It is by the gradual diminution of points of difierence, and 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 169 

by tlie gradual increase of points of agreement, among Baptists, that they 
acquire the authority which accredits their opinions, and propagates religi- 
ous truths, and binds them together into one great denomination. Indeed, 
it may be said that the authority of Baptist church government is binding 
and trustworthy, in proportion as the points of agreement among them are 
numerous, uniform and important, and the points of difference few and 
unimportant. It is mainly this process which among Baptists connects tho 
present with the past, and creates a unity and continuity of denominational 
character and feeling. It is the insensible and incessant propagation of 
opinions, usages and customs, from the old to the young within every 
church, all built upon the same model, and the adoption, by the growing 
generation, of the religious truths and tenets of their immediate predeces- 
sors, which give each church its distinctive attributes, and which enables it 
to maintain its characteristic peculiarities. 

The doctrine of authoritative agreement among Baptists applies to funda- 
mental opinions, without which a man cannot be esteemed a true Christian, 
nor a church a true church ; it does not apply to speculations upon questions 
not involving those matters of either faith or practice deemed absolutely 
essential to the well-being and peace of the churches. In the latter case, 
the person consulted advises about the facts of a given case, and his opinion 
is founded on his individual knowledge of the matter in question, and no 
general agreement can exist. It is only indirectly that the doctrine of 
agreement applies to opinions on practical and unimportant questions. But 
when an individual has mastered and thoroughly understands the system of 
jurisprudence which is sanctioned by the general consent of all the churches, 
and has combined experience with this knowledge, he is likely to advise well 
in any question belonging to the church government. Upon these minor 
question numerous discordant opinions thus arise, and for a time there may 
be rival factions, each with its own set of opinions. But by degrees even in 
matters non-essential, some system or body of opinions acquires the ascend- 
ancy; there is an approach to agreement in all matters of any importance; 
controversies begin to turn chiefly on subordinate points, and peculiar 
opinions are no longer handed down by factions led by a succession of 
leaders and disciples. Certain doctrines cease to predominate in certain 
churches and localities; they are no longer hereditary or local, but are 
common to the whole Baptist world. They are diffused by the force of the 
common law of the churches, by evidence and demonstration acting upon 
the reason of competent judges— not by force, or by and through the instru- 
mentality of ecclesiastical legislation, or the influence of councils, confer- 
ences or conventions. A trustworthy authority is thus at length formed, to 
which a person, uninformed on the subject, may safely and reasonably defer, 
satisfied that he adopts those opinions which, so far as existing researches 
and reflection have gone, are the most deserving of credit. 

While various causes have conspired to prevent a general agreement and 
consensus of opinion throughout Christendom respecting church government 
and the doctrine committed to its keeping, among Baptists the task has not 



170 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

been so difficult. Among other denominations they look upon ecclesiastical 
government as a matter of theoretical speculation. They feel themselves at 
liberty to set about devising a form of government as best suits their own 
wit and wisdom, while Baptists feel constrained to take such as they find set 
up by the apostles. They have never been called upon to speculate upon 
the question as to which is the best form of church government, but they 
enjoy the sole distinction of belonging to a system that was ready-made, and 
handed down to them, and they have had nothing to do but to build upon the 
foundations laid for them. Not being allowed to form written constitutions 
and creeds, they had to develop their polity upon scientific principles, and 
necessarily had to rely much upon the authority of the common law of the 
gospel to do so. When, however, we advance a step beyond this point, and 
inquire how far there is a general agreement throughout Christendom, with 
respect to any particular form of church government and Christianity, and 
whether all Christians are members of one church, recognizing the same set 
of doctrines, generated in the same way, we find a state of things wholly 
different. We perceive a variety of churches, with sundry forms of govern- 
ment, some composed of all the churches in the world of their own faith and 
order, some confined to a single country, some common to several countries, 
but each with its own ecclesiastical superiors and peculiar creed, and each 
condemning the members of the other churches as heretics, Protestants, 
schismatics, separatists and dissenters, and sometimes not even recognizing 
them as Christians. 

The attempt to give authenticity to religious opinions, by defining the 
church, and according to it ecclesiastical powers in such a way as to estab- 
lish a living standard and rule for the right interpretation of Scripture, inde- 
pendently of the intrinsic grounds of the decisions, never has met with favor 
among Baptists. Now, in a certain sense, every denomination which pos- 
sesses a fixed written confession of faith predetermines the most important 
articles of religious belief, and therefore cannot be said to have a free scope 
to private judgment. Baptists agree in making the Scriptures the exclusive 
canon of religious faith ; they admit that their unwritten creed is only 
entitled to acceptance so far as it is supported by Scripture ; and they do not 
assume that their church, in its individual or collective capacity, is compe- 
tent to decide on the infalhble interpretation of the divine records. In this 
sense, therefore, Baptists admit the right of private judgment. They do not 
claim for the decrees of any church or council an authority independent of, 
or extraneous to Scripture. They have a specific belief, however, definite 
and well understood ; but what others accomplish by ecclesiastical legislation 
they arrive at indirectly by a consensus of opinion, which binds none except 
those who first consent to it. 

There is great difficulty in arriving at the true interpretation of the Scrip- 
tures, and on account of the intrinsic obscurity of the leading ideas in theo- 
logy, and of the difficulty of arriving, even Avith the aid of revelation, at dis- 
tinct and intelligent conclusions on subjects lying without the domain of 
human knowledge, it would be extremely desirable, for the guidance even 



OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 171 

of Baptists, that a definite authority, in questions of Scripture interpretation, 
should exist. The attempts to remove error, to enlighten those who dissent 
from the true faith, to create a trustworthy authority in things spiritual, and 
to produce a unity of the churches, have been the work of many ages. They 
have originated in a sense of the evils springing from a diversity of religious 
opinion, without a common living point of reference deemed infallible, and 
of the advantages likely to accrue from uniformity of faith and church dis- 
cipline. By seeking to propagate truth in a matter in which allowances 
ought peculiarly to be made for differences of opinion, the ministry have 
multiplied controversies beyond all reasonable limits, so that the most patient 
student is bewildered in the labyrinth of discussion, and the most conscien- 
tious inquirer is at a loss to which individual authority he is to bow, unless 
it be to the church to which he belongs. When, however, a person, either 
from a firm reliance on the faith and practice of the church in which he has 
been brought up, or from independent examination, is satisfied of the general 
truth of the doctrines of any particular church, he will naturally regard with 
respect the best interpreters who are considered as authorities within that 
religious communion. At least it is noticed that in all controversies and 
discussions carried on between members of the same church, the works of 
the received text-writers and leading ministers of that church will be referred 
to as common authority and standards of decision. But in the interpreta- 
tion of a rule of faith the authority and binding influence of the Scriptures 
must be placed in the first rank, and then the authority of the churches in 
their customary and continued interpretation, which must be considered as 
more competent in a denominational capacity, to decide doubtful questions 
than any of their individual members, and in the last resort must overrule 
all other inferior judgments whatsoever, for Peter says : Knowing this first, 
that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. 

It is not always he who gives the law only, but likewise they who authori- 
tatively interpret the law, becomes to us a law-giver, and these interpreta- 
tions become as binding as the law itself. Human language is inadequate 
to express clearly the deep meaning of the many passages in God's law, not 
only in relation to the words, but also in regard to the doctrines couched in 
the words. And because men do, for the most part, draw the Scriptures to 
their own sense, rather than follow the true sense of them, there ought to be 
a standard higher and more certain than that of a private man. In every 
Baptist church there is a oneness of faith and practice, and whenever a 
number of persons participate in the same opinions, there is a strong inclina- 
tion to hold feUbwship and communion together ; and if there be erected 
among them a true standard of belief they will delight to celebrate in unison 
the worship of Christ whom they adore ; there is, therefore, no other way of 
knowing, with any great degree of certainty, what God commands or for- 
bids but by the interpretation which the denomination puts upon the law of 
the gospel. As the construction and interpretation of profane statutes is left 
to the civil courts of the country, whose duty it is made to execute them, so 
the interpretation of the Scriptures depends on the authority of the sove- 



172 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE J 

reign local churclies. It is not altogether the letter of the Scriptures, but 
likewise the intention, or meaning of them; that is say, the authentic 
interpretation of the text in which the true meaning of the law consists, 
which does not depend upon the judgment of private men. Otherwise, by 
the ignorance or craftiness of a private interpreter the Scriptures may be 
made to bear a sense contrary to that contained in the text, by which the 
interpreter becomes the law-giver. Now, the interpretation of the Scriptures, 
in matters of either faith or practice, is but the sentence or action of a local 
church upon such matters as may lawfully come before it, and consists in the 
application of Scripture rules to the matter then before it, for in any act of 
ecclesiastical judicature the church does no more than to consider whether 
it be Scriptural to do or not to do the thing proposed, and the sentence or 
action of the church is, therefore, the authoritative interpretation of the law 
in such cases made and provided, is authoritative, not only because it is the 
church's sentence, but because it is given by the only tribunal having power 
on earth to make it, which is law for that time, and settles the matter under 
consideration. 

In Baptist church jurisprudence, practice precedes theory, and only 
through the art of authoritative church interpretation can the principles of 
Scripture interpretation be reached, as Scripture is to be interpreted by 
itself through the church. Baptist church customs and usages are nothing 
more than the usual interpretations which in practice have been placed upon 
the Scriptures, and therefore they serve as laws, from which it follows that if 
these customs and laAvs have the force of laws by common consent, with much 
more reason are they to be used as rules in the interpretations of the Scrip- 
tures. For there is no better rule for explaining obscure and ambiguous frag- 
ments of Scriptures than the manner in which they have been interpreted by 
the custom and usage of the churches^ for the reason that what has been re- 
ceived and observed by universal consent as the authentic interpretation for 
a long time is useful and just, from which it follows that if any former inter- 
pretation has been a long time in disuse, it is abolished. As its authority 
was founded upon a long usage gotten by a constant interpretation, so its dis- 
use can take it away, and shows that what has ceased to be observed is no 
longer useful. If any obscure passage of Scripture is explained by an 
ancient usage of the churches which has fixed the sense of it, and which is 
confirmed by a constant series of uniform interpretations, the church must 
adhere to the sense declared by the constant practice, which is the best and 
only authoritative interpreter of the Scriptures. 

The church is denominated. The pillar and ground of the truth, and hence 
is obliged to watch over the interpretation of God's law. It has a right inci- 
dental to its organization and sovereignty, to restrain those of its members 
who attempt to pervert, disturb or destroy either its doctrine or government, 
for the actions of men are governed by their opinions, and their opinions are 
drawn from their own private interpretation of the Scriptures. This is all 
that calls the churches to interfere in these matters, and on this footing alone 
can they intermeddle with the opinions of their members. Any other course 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 173 

would destroy the very characteristics of church government, and leave each 
successive question to be settled by impulse, prejudice and caprice, and in a 
short time would leave the churches mthout a standard of faith or practice. 
For in the settlement of every question concerning either faith or practice it 
is necessary that there be some common judge, to whose sentence both parties 
to the controversy ought to stand. Where every member is his own inter- 
preter there is properly no judge at all, and where there is no common judge 
there is no end to the controversy. 

But it must not be inferred from these maxims here laid down that the 
churches are infallible in their interpretations of Scripture. There is noth- 
ing in the book from which can be inferred the infallibility of the churches, 
much less any particular church, and least of all the infallibility of any par- 
ticular interpreter of the Scriptures. There is no Baptist church, how cir- 
cumspect soever it may be, but may and does err in its interpretation of 
God's law. But, if, afterwards, in another like case, it finds it more conso- 
nant to truth, to give a contrary interpretation, the church is obliged to do 
it. No church's erroneous interpretations, whether in faith or practice be- 
comes its own law, nor is the church obliged to persist in it, but to discover 
by constant and prayerful meditation, what is the true intent and meaning 
of God's word, of which nevertheless the church must be the judge. In 
Baptist church jurisprudence there is but one sure sign of interpreting the 
Scriptures exactly and without error, and that is, that no Baptist church, in- 
cluding the apostolic churches, ever taught or practiced the contrary, as, for 
instance, the mode of baptism, the sovereignty, independence and equality of 
the churches. Where in opinions and questions of either faith or practice 
considered and discussed by all Baptist churches, it so happens that not one 
of them differ from another, then it may be justly inferred they hiow what 
they teach, and that the same is true. To this end a system of faith has been 
agreed upon, to which all Baptist churches have given their assent, and 
that the church's interpretation of these articles of faith, based upon and 
taken from the Scripture, is far safer for any man to believe and trust than 
his own private opinion. 

iSTow for all practical purposes in the decision of these matters it is not 
expected that there should be in all things absolute unanimity, but hberty is 
allowed for private judgment. It makes no distinction between members as 
to competency, but allows the same weight to the vote of the person most 
able, and those least able to form a correct judgment upon the question to 
be decided. The necessity, however, of having recourse to this principle of 
erecting a standard of faith and practice arises from the nature of ecclesi- 
astical government, and the expediency of a coercive supreme power which 
it impUes. Whenever the ultimate decision is vested in a church there is, by 
the supposition, no ulterior authority which can, in case of difference of 
opinion, determine who are competent judges and who are not. There is, 
therefore, no other alternative than to count the members, and to abide by 
the opinion of the majority. It is the right of the majority reduced to a 
legal expression. The necessity of decision by a majority in a church, 



174 A TREATISE UPOK BAPTIST CHUKCH JURISPEUDENCE ; 

"whether its power be judicial or administrative, is a defect inherent in the 
nature of ecclesiastical action. There is, indeed, no infallible security for the 
right decision of practical questions in ecclesiastical government, as in some 
other matters. Unfortunately the judgment of the wisest counsellors is very 
far from infallibihty. But the decision of competent judges is less likely to 
be erroneous than that of incompetent ones ; and if any means of discrimi- 
nating between them could exist in Baptist church government, it would 
undoubtedly be desirable that the decision should be confined to those who 
are most able to form a sound opinion. But in all Baptist churches the deci- 
sions are always preceded by joint consultation and debate ; and, therefore, 
the opinions of the ablest and wisest members, particularly if they are dis- 
creet and pious, are likely to influence the rest of the church. Hence, al- 
though each question is decided by the votes of the majority, the votes of the 
majority are generally determined by the opinions of the minority, wliich 
gives a practical efl?ect to the rule of authority brought about by the most 
competent. This is far more in keeping with the principles of the liberty of 
conscience than to take the consideration of these matters away entirely from 
the membership and consign them to a separate body of men outside of the 
church. It is far better to recognize as a rule of the gospel the principle of 
perfect numerical equahty in the members of the church, and give the ascend- 
ancy to the majority, which will modify the practical operation of that prin- 
ciple by the principle of trustworthy authority, and of the moral superiority 
of the most competent judges. 

As the acceptance of a certain interpretation of the Scriptures by the mul- 
titude does not aflTord presumptive evidence of its truth, unless it also be 
entertained by the competent judges ; so the mere prevalence of an opinion 
does not prove its soundness. Now that which makes the interpretation of 
the Scriptures by Baptists more trustworthy than that of any other people 
lies in the manner of doing it. They have ever observed a scrupulous and 
a religious fidelity to the letter and spirit of the Scriptures, and have ever 
held that the divine law is universally clothed in inspired words and conse- 
crated forms, in which it is not permitted to alter a letter. Their interpreta- 
tion of the Scriptures is the sign by which we recognize that im written law 
which arises and grows amongst the churches as naturaUy and necessarily as 
their language. It is called unwritten law because it arises without the 
interference of ecclesiastical legislation and becomes a rule by the common 
consent of all the churches, and it becomes a rule to none except they do 
voluntarily assent thereto. It thus becomes tried and tested, and retested, 
before it is adopted. In the province of the local church this law takes the 
form of compulsion, when assented to, because there is an ecclesiastical power 
to enforce it ; in its application to other churches in general it takes the form 
of duty, otherwise one church might impose its ow^n private interpretations 
upon another. The authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures in the 
economy of Baptist churches proposes to itself nothing else than to find a 
oneness of will, faith and practice, in which the indi\ndual will of every mem- 
ber and the general oneness of will are synthetically united. Hence it has 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 175 

never been the custom to call a general council to settle questions as to how 
a certain doctrine shall be interpreted. Private councils may be called with 
the consent of factions in a divided church, but they can have no binding 
authority but what is given them by consent. 

If it be urged that in the mass of ideas, unwritten interpretations and 
technical expressions which we have derived from our predecessors, there 
must be mingled with the truths achieved a great mass of error, which by 
the traditional power of authority and an ancient possession can obtain an 
undue influence over us ; to avoid this danger we must desire from time to 
time that the entire mass of what has been handed down to us should be 
proved anew, questioned and investigated as to its origin. It is necessary for 
Baptists and it has ever been their habit to make a periodical revision of the 
labors of their predecessors in order to separate the ungenuine and the 
erroneous and to appropriate the truth as an abiding possession to Baptists. 
This unwritten system of interpreting the Scriptures peculiar to Baptists 
alone has exercised immutable dominion not only over the present and future 
of the churches, but the connection must be acknowledged which binds the 
past with the present and future. If we consider the Baptist denomination 
as an ecclesiastical unity, and so far, and for this purpose, as the conductor 
of authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures, we must not therefore con- 
sider this unity and continuity of the faith as merely existing amongst con- 
temporary churches. On the contrary this unity proceeds through generations 
succeeding one another ; it unites the present with the past and the future. This 
system of ecclesiastical interpretation of the law of the gospel tends to the 
unaltered duration of these usages ; but it is also the basis of the gradual 
formation and improvement of the law, and in this respect we must ascribe 
to it a superior importance over any other system ever devised by man. 

Now it is quite different with all hierarchical system of church government. 
This mode of interpreting Holy Scripture is by the decrees of councils, 
synods and conferences meeting formally and ostensibly for that purpose, and 
Avhatever is decreed by these bodies and imposed upon the churches needs 
itself to be interpreted by all the arts and intrigues of disputation. We 
then have two writings — one Scripture proper, and the other Scripture im- 
proper. The one contains the wiU of God as expressed by inspired men 
through the guidance of the Holy Spirit — the other man's idea of what God 
has actually said or rather ought to have said. It is to the Scripture pri- 
marily, and afterwards to everything that is certainly and immediately drawn 
from thence. But if you go beyond this there are so many certain indiscern- 
ible fallibilities; so many intrigues of fancy in the ecclesiastical legislator, 
and so much inaptness in those who have not been educated to think and act 
for themselves in religious matters, that it is ten to one either they do not 
understand one another, or do not understand the interpretation placed upon 
the text for them by these extra-ecclesiastical bodies. So long as we go in a 
straight line to the fountain head, the Scripture, its letter and its intention, 
we commit no error, or can soon be reproved and corrected if we do, but if 
we allow some one claiming authority to step in between us and the law and 



176 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

place an interpretation upon it for us, we at once double the difficulty, and 
lose sight of the law. For interpretations upon Scripture ought to be few, 
and they ought not to be multij^lied Avithout apparent necessity, and he that 
makes more than Christ intended, or puts false ones upon the law, lays a 
snare for his own foot. A law drawn from a law must be evidently and 
apparently in the bowels of it before it can be drawn out, or else it must not 
be obtruded as the sentence and intendment of the lawgiver. The influence 
of authority in matters of faith and practice thus brought about does not 
imply that numerous persons have examined the question upon its own 
merits, and have founded their conclusions upon an independent investiga- 
tion of the evidence. In other systems opinions may be held by a large body 
of Christians, but they may have all mechanically followed the same blind 
guide ; so that their number has, in fact, no weight, and they are no more 
entitled to be reckoned as independent voices, than the succession of com- 
pilers who transcribe an historical error are to be reckoned as independent 
witnesses. Men are often deceived by false interpretations of the Bible, but 
never by the Bible itself. 

A religious people thus governed are willing to acknowledge that the 
authority which represents the denomination has far more information and 
wisdom in it than any of the churches or the members thereof ; and that it 
is the duty as well as the right of that authority, to guide each church and 
each member. These ideas take root and spread in proportion as ecclesiasti- 
cal conditions become more equal and the whole Baptist family more alike ; 
they are produced by equality, and in turn they hasten the progress of 
equality. Baptists would rise up in rebellion if it were attempted to insti- 
tute a formal government, with one man, or several at its head to rule the 
denomination, but they hold that this unseen but felt authority ought per- 
petually to exist and exert itself to keep pure the doctrine and practice of 
the churches. The unity and omnipotence of the supreme authority of the 
whole denomination, and the uniformity of its ethical rules, constitute the 
principal characteristics of Baptist church government. In other systems 
there are synods, conferences and councils, invested with ecclesiastical powers 
to hold the denominations together, while amongst Baptists the idea of 
inherent power to govern the churches, or the denomination, residing in such 
tribunals is obliterated, and, indeed, never had a lodgment in their minds ; 
but, nevertheless, the idea of the authority of the denomination at large 
rises to fill its place. Baptists have ever challenged the right of these uninsti- 
tuted governments to rule the churches of Christ, and are constantly disput- 
ing as to the proper hands in which this supremacy is to be vested, but they 
readily agree upon the duties and rights of that supremacy. Pedo-Baptists 
cannot understand how so great a denomination can be governed without a 
formally instituted governmental agency to do the work. They say that it 
is a machine without machinery — a government without governors. But, 
nevertheless, it is a government. It originates in no caprice of the human 
intellect, but it is a necessary condition of the apostolic form of church 
polity, and has the stamp of divinity upon it. 



OR, THE COMMO]^- LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 177 

The tendency, then, in such a system of church polity is to destroy all 
originality, to crush every tendency to change, so that when variability and 
originality does become the prime necessity for progress in the flexible laws 
of the churches fixed usage and custom stands a most powerful and danger- 
ous enemy. See how long it took to get the whole Baptist world to consent 
to the establishment of church councils, associations and conventions ! A 
departure from the old fixed way of thinking about, or doing even the sim- 
plest things in church polity had its awful penalty, either in shocked denom- 
inational opinion which condemned the departure, or in some indescribable 
veneration for the ancient landmarks. Every Baptist knows how every step 
in the development of the various enterprises of Baptist churches has been 
combated ; and even to-day, how much courage it requires on the part of 
" oracles not well inspired " to advance a new idea in doctrine or polity, or 
to propose any measure not consistent with common usage and custom. The 
conservatism of the whole Baptist denomination is immediately excited, and 
often the most wholesome truths, when properly understood, can estabhsh 
themselves only after bitter conflict with fixed manner of thought. And if 
this be so in this enlightened age, how much more powerful it must have 
been in times of the great antiquity of the churches when men did not under- 
stand Baptist principles as well as they do now. And yet Baptists must 
remember that in time all these tilings will become antiquities, and hence we 
should beware lest we make haste too rapidly, and all the glorious land- 
marks of Christ's churches become demolished for want of defenders to pre- 
serve them. Once Baptist church government is subjected to the ordeal of 
innovation, it can never be withdrawn ; it can never again be clothed vdth. 
the sanctity of the law of the gospel ; or fenced by consecration ; it will 
remain open to free choice, and exposed to profane deliberation. Stand fast 
therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and he not again 
entangled with the yoke of bondage. 

Ecclesiastical government, in its truest sense, applied to a free church, must 
act out denominational opinion long since established and recognized, and 
not such opinions as we may have at the present time, growing out of some 
heated controversy, nor such as we may have five years hence. To do this, 
two things are necessary : it must know public denominational opinion, and, 
secondly, its action must be the regular action of the churches, not an irregu- 
lar series of accidental impulses. This consensus of opinion, however, can 
be ascertained by and through the medium of our associational, conven- 
tional and other meetings only. This may be done through the messengers 
coming up fresh from the various churches to these meetings, who are often 
instructed by their churches to voice the opinions entertained by them re- 
specting matters of grave interest. Otherwise, general, momentary opinion, 
even rumor, will rule instead of true, settled, denominational opinion. These 
messengers or quasi representatives from the churches must truly obey this 
general public opinion theretofore established, not momentary impulse, excite- 
ment, spite or fanaticism — all of which may seize and have seized the masses, 
because they seize upon the individual messengers composing them. The 
12 



178 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

messengers composing these Baptist bodies, standing at a distance, being 
separated from the masses, in many cases feel the necessity of calm reflec- 
tion, and opposition to the sweeping current of excitement. All unmedi- 
tated action on the part of Baptist associations or conventions, met together 
to formulate or carry out public opinion, is dangerous, because it is power, 
and unrestricted power, whether it be mental or moral, is hazardous and 
dangerous. 

It is a very remarkable fact that Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, 
Presbyterians and all other religionists adhering to the imperial system of 
church government are striving with all their might to destroy the local 
independence of the churches, and to transfer the administration from all 
points of the circumference to the centre; whereas the Baptists are en- 
deavoring to retain this administration within its ancient boundaries — the 
local churches. The Baptists have ever been a plain people — never divided 
by any orders, classes or privileges ; they have never known what it is to be 
priest-ridden ; they have never been deprived of the right of ruling them- 
selves, and consequently have never known the necessity of erecting a 
supreme power to manage their affairs. In those other systems the authority 
of their governments has not only spread throughout the sphere of all exist- 
ing powers, till that sphere can no longer contain it, but it goes further, and 
invades the domain reserved to private conscience. Amongst Baptists de- 
nominational authority contents itself with managing and superintending 
whatever directly and ostensibly concerned the denominational honor and 
unity ; but in all other respects the churches and members were left to work 
out their own free will. But they must not forget that there is a point at 
which the errors and disorders of churches and individual members often 
involve the welfare of the whole denomination, and that to prevent the ruin 
of churches and individuals must sometimes become a matter of denomina- 
tional importance. Hence it must be admitted that the whole denomination 
has, and ought to have a quasi-governmental oversight as to churches and 
individuals, and it gains a firmer footing every day about, above and around 
all the churches to advise, to assist and to admonish, but never to coerce them. 

A principle of Baptist inter-church authority must always exist in our 
peculiar system of polity. In the moral and intellectual world its place is 
variable, but in Baptist church government a certain and invariable place 
it has. The independence of individual minds may be greater, or it may be 
less, but unlimited and unbounded it cannot be. The question then is, not to 
know whether any ecclesiastical authority outside of the churches exists, but 
simply where it resides and by what standard it is to be measured. In other 
systems of polity w^here there are different orders of the ministry and every- 
thing is unequal, there are some individuals wielding the power of superior 
intelligence, while the multitude are unenlightened. In these systems men 
are, therefore, naturally induced to shape their opinions by the standard of 
their church dignitaries, whilst they are averse to recognize the superior 
opinions of the whole denomination. The contrary takes place in Baptist 
church government. The nearer the membership are drawn to a common 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 179 

level, the less prone does each member become to place implicit faith in a 
certain man or a certain class of men. But his readiness to believe in and 
to be guided by the whole denomination increases, and the consensus of the 
opinion of the whole denomination becomes the mistress of all the churches. 
Not only is the denominational opinion the only guide which private judg- 
ment retains amongst Baptists, but amongst such a people it possesses a power 
infinitely beyond what it has elsewhere. In this state of equality Baptists 
have not much faith in one another, by reason of their common resemblance ; 
but tliis resemblance gives them almost unbounded confidence in the judg- 
ment of the whole denomination ; for it is not probable, as they are all en- 
dowed with equal means of judging, but that the greater truth should go 
with the greater number. When the member of a Baptist church compares 
himself individually with all those about him, he feels with pride that he is 
the equal of any one of them ; but when he comes to survey the totality of 
about four million Baptists in the United States, and places himself in con- 
trast with so huge and intelligent a body, he is instantly overwhelmed by a 
sense of his own insignificance and weakness. The same equality which 
renders him independent of each of his brethren, taken severally, exposes 
him alone and unprotected to the influence of the greater number. Baptists 
have, therefore, in this free system of church polity, a singular power and 
authority, which other systems cannot conceive of; for it does not force men 
to adopt certain religious opinions, but it enforces them when once adopted, 
and infuses them into the intellect and heart by a sort of pressure of the 
minds and hearts of all the whole Baptist family upon the conscience and 
reason of each. 

AVhenever a Baptist is honored by being elected a messenger to represent 
his church in any denominational meeting of any kind whatever, he is de- 
puted to serve not only his individual church, but to serve the whole denomi- 
nation. The individual messenger should have no selfish interests, but is 
expected to judge of general measures with reference to the denominational 
welfare, according to the light which he might receive then and there. The 
contrary should always be considered as a betrayal of the high trust com - 
mitted to his hands. If there be factional divisions, in which even his own 
church is interested, he should rise above them. If factional feuds and sel- 
fish interests were sufiered to be woven into a system of church polity, and 
to become a basis of denominational ethics, ruinous indeed would become 
the consequences. No set of churches, meeting together for associational or 
conventional purposes through their accredited messengers, can hope to pre- 
serve the doctrine pure unless they keep a guard over those deputed to act 
for them in these bodies. If Baptist church jurisprudence is ever to deserve 
the name of an authoritative science, it must seek to unite the churches by 
bonds more solid and lasting than those of self-interest ; it must seek to erect 
a higher standard of authority, and to harmonize the policy of the churches 
more with the laws of the gospel, and with the true precepts of religion and 
morals, than with the promptings of interest and expediency. Blinded by 
self-interest, some Baptists cannot see that any inter-church law does or can 



180 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPRUDENCE ; 

exist, and if they apprehend its existence, they sometimes do not acknowl- 
edge its authority nor observe its doctrines. 

The supposition is that all rightful authority in every church is exercised 
by the majority of the membership of that church. But should that major- 
ity depart from the faith of the gospel and go counter to the authoritative 
opinion of the denomination, what is the duty of the minority under such 
circumstances ? For the purposes of government the majority must be per- 
mitted to govern, but it is nothing more than a pretended maxim, that the 
majority of a church is always right. It is nothing more than an ecclesias- 
tical fiction to designate a Baptist landmark, beyond which we cannot travel 
— that is church government by the greatest number. The true theory lies 
far deeper than in a maxim, such as that the majority is always right — a 
position a thousand times contradicted by the history of the churches. The 
liberty and safety of the churches consists, among other things, in the unre- 
strained right of the minority, of a faction, nay of an individual, to convert, 
if they can do so by lawful means, the majority ; ecclesiastical safety consists 
in the fact that the will of those who have the power may be modified by 
opposition ; for right and truth is never absolutely on one side. We may go 
farther; the more dictatorial and overwhelming a majority becomes, the 
more necessary, steady, yet lawful opposition may become, and, in most cases 
actually does become, lest ecclesiastical government approach to the vortex 
of Catholicism, Methodism, Presbyterianism or Episcopalianism — that is, 
governments in which neither the minority nor the majority have any voice. 
A majority does not always even indicate authoritative public opinion, 
although it may show momentary general opinion, to which mere rumor 
belongs. 

Then again authoritative ecclesiastical opinion depends in a very great 
measure upon those many extra ecclesiastical, not unecclesiastical, meetings 
which sometimes take place among Baptists, in which they either unite their 
scattered means for the obtaining of some common end, social in general, or 
ecclesiastical in particular ; or express their opinion in definite resolutions 
upon some important matter before the churches. These meetings may be 
entirely unofi3cial ; sometimes they are semi-ofiicial, at others they may be 
conventions of messengers, sent by the churches interested, and yet the 
whole being the effect of the voluntary action of the churches, not called 
into existence by any prescribed rules of Scriptural law. These meetings 
may be for the purpose of awakening an interest in missions, in education or 
in any other legitimate subject looking to the welfare of the denomination. 
No denomination can hope for true advancement before it is well acquainted 
with this important agent in carrying out denominational public opinion. 
Much latent energy lies dormant in the churches, because of a failure to 
realize the importance of these free extra-eccleSiastical meetings. In these 
meetings the denomination frequently acts as such, separate from the churches, 
for instance, when they consist of members sent for missionary, or, as we 
have often seen, for educational or social purposes, from the various sister 
churches. Sometimes, however, unless caution is used, they are greatly 



THE GOSPEL. 181 

abused, and made the seat of factious excitement and hurtful divisions ; but, 
generally speaking, it is undeniable they are at once the generators of that 
important agent, which makes the machinery of ecclesiastical government 
move and work in a denominational spirit, and constitute the means through 
which the latent energies of the churches are made subservient to the good 
of the cause, which otherwise could not be utilized. 

I know there are Baptists who look with suspicion upon these meetings, 
but if we comprehend under them all those which are composed either of 
individuals themselves, or messengers from the churches, yet of an extra- 
ecclesiastical character, we shall see at once that they are of great import- 
ance in order to direct denominational attention to subjects of magnitude, 
to test the opinion of the denomination, to inform persons at a distance of 
the state of denominational opinion respecting certain measures, whether 
yet depending or adopted ; to resolve upon and adopt resolutions, to encour- 
age individuals or bodies of Baptists in Scriptural undertakings, requiring 
the moral support of well-directed and expressed denominational approba- 
tion striving for the same ends; to disseminate knowledge by way of reports 
of boards and committees; to form societies for religious, educational or 
charitable purposes ; to sanction by spontaneous expression of the opinion 
of the denomination, measures not strictly within the purview of ecclesias- 
tical government, yet not in gross violation of it, but enforced by necessity ; 
to agree upon more or less extensive measures of denominational utility, 
and whatever else their object may be, not unscriptural, and which do 
not foment strifes and discords to the injury of the churches. It does 
not seem, however, necessary to dwell upon these meetings particularly 
with reference to church ethics, except to emphasize their importance and 
usefulness in the formation of public opinion, if properly used. But there 
is no other subject connected with Baptist church government so fraught 
with danger as the use of such meetings if used for selfish ends, so that the 
churches instead of reaping the benefits from them, they are exposed to all 
the feverish and withering eflTects of passionate and wild agitation so hurtful 
to the churches of Christ. 

Those who are slow to see the utility and Scripturalness of these extra- 
ecclesiastical meetings in the promulgation of Baptist views and opinions, 
and who are not acquainted with the practical operations and necessities of 
free church government are apt to consider all popular meetings of this kind 
as so many deviations and exceptions from regular church government, and 
ask tremblingly, -Where is the guarantee against their abuse ? Among many 
guarantees which might be mentioned, there is one that is paramount above 
all others, which is, that all such meetings shall not and cannot exercise any 
ecclesiastical power, or in any way interfere with the independence of the 
local churches. Otherwise, an absolute guarantee does not exist against their 
abuse, any more than against the abuse of any other primary principle. 
Every Baptist ought to keep in mind, that all unnecessary meetings of indi- 
vidual Baptists either excite and stir uselessly, and, therefore, injuriously, or 
lessen the interest in such pubhc meetings, which is equally inconvenient, 



182 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE , * 

and very injurious to the true interest of the churches; and that, on the 
other hand, we ought not to be prevented from taking those measures, which, 
through pubhc meetings, would produce demonstrations of denominational 
sentiments, sufficient to arrest errors, or to further the interests of the 
churches in every legitimate way. If a Baptist, as an individual, attends 
such a meeting, or is sent as a messenger for a specific end, he must be care- 
ful not to transgress the lines which we have endeavored to ascertain as the 
proper limits of denominational movements; in other words, the more 
avowedly the end of the meeting is one of a selfish character, the more 
imperative becomes caution against being betrayed into factiousness. 

What, then, is the duty of a messenger, sent from a church to represent it 
in these extra-ecclesiastical meetings? In order that the authoritative opin- 
ion of the church be truly represented, ought he to serve his own opinions, 
or those of his church ? On what these meetings ought to do, and how they 
ought to do it, is a question to be answered by the science of church ethics, 
but, in general, it is his duty to make himself acquainted, to the best of his 
ability, with the authoritative opinion and wishes of his church, and its wel- 
fare ; and especially that church to which he belongs, for he stands not for 
himself alone. If Baptist church government is to be kept pure and stable, 
his conduct should be influenced by, and reflect the general tamper of the 
church to which he belongs, and it should strongly influence him. If ques- 
tions of a factional nature should arise, he should never transgress the proper 
line between his church and a faction. In fact, the true messenger is in the 
service of the denomination, he is neither sent for his own ambition, nor to 
further the interests of a faction. These extra-ecclesiastical meetings should 
never be turned into debating societies, in which faction is arrayed against 
faction, party against party. If they do, hurtful divisions are sure to come, 
which it will take time to heal. Let messengers elevate themselves above 
all selfish considerations, and put themselves upon the high plane of the good 
of the whole denomination. He should obey the laws of ethics which pre- 
vailed throughout the whole denomination, that the greater and wider 
interest must prevail over the lesser and narrower. The interest of the cause 
of Christ prevails over that of the denomination ; the denomination over 
that of a particular church ; that of a church over that of a faction in it, 
and that of a faction even over that of ourselves individually. 

It is begging the question to appeal to the consensus of denominational 
opinion as to what a doctrine or principle of law is, as against that of the 
individual church ; for the denomination has no ecclesiastical tribunal for 
making its authoritative interpretations known, or of intervening between 
the church and its members to nullify the church's interpretation. I do not 
ignore the fact that some Baptists think they see in the body of inter-church 
customary or common law, the postulates of an interpretation wider than 
that of a single church. This may be true, and it cannot be doubted but 
that such a church ought to be guided by such interpretation ; but we must 
not forget that these agreements and customs are not the law between the 
church and its own members, unless the local church recognizes them as 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 183 

such. For instance, it is a firmly established principle of Baptist church 
jurisprudence that each local church is the interpreter, in the last instance, 
of inter-church law, for all persons subject to its jurisdiction. At the present 
stage of the science of jurisprudence, a nearer approximation to the truth 
seems to be attainable from the standpoint of the local church, than from 
the standpoint of what is known as the general denominational opinion. An 
appeal to the denomination, if it brings any reply at all, will receive an 
answer confused, aud many times contradictory and unintelligible. In the 
far-distant future it may be otherwise, but for the present, and the discern- 
able future, the local church appears to be the organ for the interpretation, 
in the last instance, of all questions, whether of faith or practice. Contact 
between the churches may, and undoubtedly does, harmonize the interpreta- 
tion ; but it is still the church's interpretation which governs, and the 
church's power which is the sovereign transformer of these interpretations 
into laws. But it may be objected, if church sovereignty has this character 
of seeming infaUibilty, it should be denied to the church altogether. That 
would mean at once, and from the start, the annihilation of the local church. 
The church must have the power to make these rulings ; otherwise, it is no 
church ; it would be but an anarchic society, with no efficacy in it what- 
ever. 

Experience teaches that sometimes associations and conventions are quite 
as ready as any other bodies to assume arbitrary powers, and encroach upon 
the independence of the churches. A large body of representative Baptists 
sometimes is abundantly ready to impose, not only its generally narrow 
views of its interests, but its abstract opinions, as laws, binding upon the 
churches. The present social influences of our people tend so strongly to 
make the power of persons acting in masses, the only substantial power of 
Christianity, that there never was more necessity for surrounding our 
churches with the most powerful defences, in order to maintain their freedom 
and independence, which are the only source of their real progress and 
purity, and of most of the qualities which make Baptists a distinctive and a 
peculiar people. All tendency on the part of these bodies to stretch their 
interference and authority, and assume a power over the churches, should be 
regarded with unremitting jealousy. This caution in Baptist church gov- 
ernment is more important than in any other form of ecclesiastical society ; 
because where denominational opinion is so powerful a thing, which is 
opposed by the sovereign local church, it does not, as in most other things, 
find some other rival power to which it can appeal for relief. And then it 
must be remembered that in this day and generation there is a tendency for 
power and influence to drift away from the churches by the establishment of 
numberless societies, leagues and unions, and by this means the importance, 
power and influence of the churches are being minimized and weakened, 
and these other bodies magnified and exaggerated. The tendency is that 
the churches must do nothing, while these extra-ecclesiastical bodies are 
called upon to do everything. Let Baptists beware lest they run upon 
unseen breakers, before they are cognizant of the danger. The wise pilot 



184 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJRCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

knows wliere the breakers are not, rather than where they are. To keep in 
the known channel is safer than to venture out upon unknown seas. 

As soon as we are out of the province of ecclesiastical government, how- 
ever, it is most important to assert the principle of individual independence 
in matters of religious opinion, taste and judgment, as against the principle 
of numerical preponderance, provided the individual does not make use of 
this liberty to advocate heresies to the destruction of the unity of the faith as 
taught by the denomination. Whether an individual exercises this inde- 
pendence by forming his own conclusions, or choosing his own guides, it is 
equally desirable that the majority should not force their opinion upon him 
against his incHnation, by the sanction of the popular censure. But so far 
as a change of the poUty of the churches is concerned, it does not admit of 
discussion. To admit the right to discuss the propriety of change at once 
breaks down the yoke of fixed legahty. The idea of the two is inconsistent. 
As far as it goes, the mere putting up of a subject to discussion, with the 
object of being guided by that discussion is a clear admission that that sub- 
ject is in no degree settled by established rule, and that men are free to 
choose in it. It is an admission, too, that there is no sacred authority — no 
one transcendent and divinely appointed polity which in that matter we are 
bound to follow. And if so sacred and solemn a thing as a change in, apos- 
tolic church government be once admitted to discussion, ere long the habit 
of discussion comes to be established, the sacred charm of that government 
would be dissolved. Once so far forget ourselves as to effectually submit a 
divine subject to that ordeal, and you can never withdraw it again ; you can 
never again cloth it with sacredness, or fence it by consecration ; it remains 
forever open to free choice, and exposed to profane deliberation. 

But how do the Scriptures themselves become authoritatively the law-book 
of the churches ? Their divine verity is not doubted. Their divine inspira- 
tion is conceded. The efficacy of the teaching of them is acloiowledged. 
But how are they made canonical rules and how do they become of binding 
authority upon the churches ? Now we have endeavored to show that the 
only authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures safe to follow, where there 
is a diversity of sentiment, is the sense the usage of the denomination and 
our wise men put upon the law of the gospel ; that is to say, that which 
reason and common sense makes choice of among opposite sentiments. And 
Baptists reckon only those to be trustworthy interpretations whose disposi- 
tions are such, that it cannot be said, that a sense different from them would 
be contrary to the principles of the Scriptures ; because God has engravened 
them upon our cousciences, and has made them so inseparable from our 
enlightened and Christianized reason, that it alone is sufficient for under- 
standing them, and that even those persons who are ignorant of the art, the 
criticism of the di\dne law, know these ecclesiastical rules and make laws of 
them to themselves. It is erroneous to suppose that any council or synod in 
the early history of the churches fixed the canon of the Scriptures, or in any 
way contributed to it by their deliberations and acts. This is a pure fiction 
v/hich has found favor with some because it seemed to countenance their 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 185 

theory, tliat we have received the canon of Scripture from the church. We 
cannot prove the authenticity of the Scriptures by the churches, for it is by 
the same Scriptures that we first seek to prove the establishment of the 
churches. To contend thus would be reasoning in a circle. The churches 
only add their testimony to that of individuals in all ages that they were 
written by the persons to whom they have been ascribed. 

Therefore none can infalhbly know that the Scripture we use is the reve- 
lation of God, but from all the trustworthy evidences we are able to gather 
upon the subject we verily believe it. Faith in a supernatural law does not 
consist in a knowledge of its source, but principally in a belief that it is from 
God— a gift which he freely gives to whom he pleases. We do not know 
naturally, but we verily believe that the Old and New Testaments, as we 
have them now, are the true record of those things which were done and 
said by the prophets and apostles. Although these books were written by 
different men, yet it is manifest that the writers were all inspired with one 
and the same spirit, and that they all conspire to one and the same end, 
which is to furnish the churches authoritative rules, both in rehgion and 
ecclesiastical pohty. While there are innumerable marks of divine authen- 
ticity about these sacred writings, yet when we come to the question as to 
how we know that the Scriptures are the Avord of God, we know it by faith 
and take it upon trust. If by knowledge we understand that we must 
infallibly and naturally know it, as coming from our senses, it cannot be said 
that we know it, because it is that kind of a truth that does not proceed from 
the natural conceptions engendered by our senses. The great apostle defines 
faith to be the evidence of things not seen ; that is to say, not otherwise evi- 
dent, but by faith. For whatever is evident by natural reason is not called 
faith, for we are then said not to believe, but to know those things that are 
evident. From the standpoint of church polity for all practical purposes 
each church has the power to receive and pass upon the authenticity and 
genuineness of these laws in the same sense that a profane judge is called 
upon to know the source and authority of the laws he is empowered to ad- 
minister. While the church does not estabhsh its canonicity, to judge of the 
authenticity of the Bible belongs to church sovereignty, for if it is the law- 
book of the church, she must be permitted to judge of its verity. 

There is a mde difference between Baptists and other denominations as to 
the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical councils in passing upon the canon of the 
Scripture. The Bible comes down to us as a book divine. But how do we 
know it is divine ? We must give a reasonable account of the formation of 
the canon of the Scripture. Catholics and Episcopalians depend upon 
councils, which convened in the early ages of the Christian era, for the estab- 
lishment of the canon of the Scriptures. Indeed, I have a little book before 
me entitled: What is the Church? (D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1887) 
written by an English churchman, in which (page 12) it is contended, " That 
the first council of Nice established against the Arians that Christ was per- 
fect God ; " " The Council of Constantinople established that Christ was per- 
fect man as well as that the Holy Ghost was God ; " " The council of Ephe- 



186 

BUS established against the Nestorians the Unity of the person of our blessed 
Lord ; " and that " The council of Chalcedon established the twofold nature 
of our Lord." Whereas, in deed and in truth, the canon of the Scriptures 
was not, and could not be settled by any council. As for those other mat- 
ters which it is claimed were settled by the several councils mentioned, if the 
Scriptures themselves do not establish them, it is hard to tell how a set of 
men could have done so. The books of the New Testament were known to 
be genuine writings of the apostles and evangelists in the same way and 
manner that the works of any other writers are known to be theirs — that is, 
on the ground of a unanimous, or generally concurring testimony of con- 
temporary and succeeding writers, both friends and enemies. The churches 
did not create the canon of the Scriptures by the decree of any council, 
though the churches recognized the fact that a certain body of writings 
knov/n as the Scriptures had, imder the Providential guidance, grown into 
canonical authority. 

Hence we are led to believe in the authenticity of the Scriptures and that 
they are genuine, because they were esteemed authentic by those who lived 
closest to the times when they were first promulgated. It would be exceed- 
ingly unreasonable to suppose that in the early ages of Christianity there 
was no care exercised in ascertaining the true authors and genuine character 
of these writings. By those primitive Christians this law was universally re- 
ceived without opposition or contradiction, and by the churches preserved 
and handed down from generation to generation, and by them read and 
appealed to in all their reUgious controversies, and held in great veneration, 
and accepted by the churches all over the world as the authoritative rule of 
their faith and practice. AVe can see that it is very easy as to how each 
church can adopt the Bible as its law book, and how it can be made its rule 
of action by mutual covenant, but there must be a reasonable and sufficient 
certainty of the author and the authority of him who promulgated it, for 
nothing is law where the legislator is not known. God may command and 
inspire men, as in the olden times, in a supernatural way to write and deliver 
laws to men, because it is of the essence of law that he who is to be bound 
thereby, that he be assured of the authority of him who declares it. The 
question then is, how can we, without supernatural revelation to us, be 
assured individually of the authenticity of the law of the gospel ? not how 
we can be bound to obey it, that is not so difficult. By our covenants we 
undertake to obey it, but not bound thereby to believe it, for our belief is 
not subject to commands, but it is the gift of God. To obey is to do or not 
to do, as one is obliged, and depends upon the will, but to believe depends 
on the guidance of our hearts that are in the hands of God. Laws only re- 
quire obedience, belief requires preachers, teachers and arguments drawn 
from reason or from something already known or believed. 

But it must be understood that before we can have faith in anything there 
must be some evidence upon which to base our belief, for where there is no 
reason for our belief, there is no reason why we should believe. In the first 
place we say that there is an unbroken chain of evidence of contemporary 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 187 

writers, extending to the present time, many of whom were not compelled as 
we are to take these sacred matters upon trust, but who enjoyed every oppor- 
tunity of knowing and believing the truth, and whose character for veracity 
is unimpeached and unimpeachable. These witnesses were not inspired 
men, but early disciples whom the Lord doubtless raised up as witnesses to 
the authenticity of the Scriptures, whose testimony they have left as a blessed 
legacy to those who succeeded them. They received these writings knowing 
where they came from, and took it as a power or germ of a new moral life 
as coming from God the Father. Possibly none of these contemporary 
writers saw any of the apostles pen these Scriptures but they lived so close 
to the apostoHc age that they were morally certain that they wrote them. 
The Lord might have made the proofs of the verity of the Scriptures more 
overpowering than the evidence of mathematics itself. The Lord uttered 
forth the precepts of the old law in thunder tones from Mount Sinai ; so 
might he have uttered this law in unmistakable tones, or wrote them in flam- 
ing letters of fire upon the sky for a scroll. But he designedly left some- 
thing to our creduhty, as he designed our present state to be imperfect and 
probationary, in which our faith and faculties should be called forth by the 
powerful stimulus of necessity. We were not placed in the noontide light 
as full-grown men in Christ Jesus. Under such conditions faith would cease 
to be a virtue in a world so constituted ; obedience to the law of the gospel 
would have become a servile compulsion, and the early Christians automa- 
tons. It is a blessed thought to know that we have light enough to direct 
us, if we are faithful to improve it. 

There are two senses wherein writings may be said to be canonical, for 
canon signifies a rule, and a rule is a precept by which a man is guided and 
directed in any action whatever. Such precepts, though given by a teacher 
to his disciple, or a counselor to his friend, without power to compel him to 
observe them, are nevertheless canons, because they are rules; but when 
they are given by one whom he that receives them is bound to obey, then 
such canons are not only rules, but they are, in the true sense, laws. The 
Scriptures being rules of faith and practice, the question is as to how they 
are made laws proper. In order, therefore, to understand how these precepts 
become ecclesiastical laws, and of binding force in all Baptist churches, it is 
necessary to make a distinction between the divine precepts of religion as 
revealed in the Scriptures, and the laws of ecclesiastical polity. The first is 
of divine origin, and hence immutable ; the latter is arbitrary, and takes in 
all the rules of manners and practice, and relates to the external part of 
divine worship and to church discipline. In order that there be an organic 
tribunal to disclose what laws are proper to be observed, and to enforce an 
observance of them, the church was founded by Christ, to which he commit- 
ted the exclusive oversight of all matters, whether of religion or polity. 
The church, as founded by Christ, is an assemblage of baptized believers, 
professing the Christian religion, united in the person of one sovereign, 
under a covenant to obey God's law. When such a covenant is entered into 
whereby a church is constituted, whatever has been agreed upon in their 



188 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUPwISPEUDENCE ; 

covenants stands in the place of laws to those who made them, as parties to 
a contract make a law between themselves as to matters therein agreed upon, 
which a court will enforce in all faithfulness. Thus by this organic union 
there is erected a judiciary, so to speak, to declare what shall be taken as 
law and to compel the observance of the same. 

The universal authority of the Scriptures consists in the relation which 
they have to the order of the churches, of which they are the canonical 
rules. But there is this difference between the authority of Scripture rules 
proper, and the common or customary laws of the churches, that, the laws 
of the Scriptures being essentially fundamental, they are immutable and 
unchangeable ; and that their authority is always the same, at all times, and 
in all places. But the customary laws being indifferent to these foundations 
of the order of the churches, so that there is not scarcely any one of them 
which may not be altered, or abolished, without overturning the said founda- 
tions. The justice of these latter kind of laws consists in the particular 
advantage that is found by enacting them, according as the times and places 
may require and each church may see proper. But speaking generally the 
universal authority of all ecclesiastical laws consists in the divine appoint- 
ment, which commands all men to obey them. But as there is a difference 
between the intrinsic authority of the laws of the Scriptures and the cus- 
tomary laws, so likewise their authority is distinguished in a manner suited 
to the difference of their authority. The fundamental laws of the Scrip- 
tures being truth itself, they have a natural and a divine authority over the 
churches, which is given us for no other end but that we may discern the 
truth, and may submit to it. But because all Christians have not always 
their minds clear enough for discerning this truth, or their hearts upright 
enough for obeying it, ecclesiastical polity gives to these laws another juris- 
diction over them, by the authority of the ecclesiastical powers that oblige 
men to obey them by reason of their covenants so to do. But the authority 
of the indifferent laws consists purely in the disciplinary force which they 
derive from the power of those who have a right to make these voluntary 
rules, and in the appointment of Christ, who commands obedience to be 
paid to them. 

The authority of those learned in the faith and practice of the churches, in 
matters ecclesiastical, no body disputes ; the same should be the case with 
the text writer who has penetrated the laws of the gospel. To obtain a 
clear notion of the relation of one church to another, and of one member 
to another, that the problems which daily rise in practice may be scientifi- 
cally solved, is the aim of every lover of the churches. This work is evi- 
dently beyond the capacity of the great majority of our members. It is 
well, then, to erect a standard of authority for the solution of these ques- 
tions, learned text writers if you please, devoted to the solution of these dif- 
ficult problems, who have studied them and taken upon themselves the task 
of discovering the true law, and the proper thing to be done under that 
law, to formulate rules of action, and to interpret them when necessary, by 
throwing light upon such obscure points as may arise in the minds of those 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 189 

wlio liave to follow them. If the great majority of our membership are too 
often incompetent to discover the proper principles of their actions in these 
difficult pi'oblems, it but the more forcibly demonstrates the necessity and 
utility of such a standard of authority, and the propriety of following it. 
Not only have they sometimes great trouble in discerning nicely the true 
moral principles that should guide them, but they often have small inclina- 
tion to follow them, unless they are laid under some disciplinary restraint, 
the application whereof never fails to degrade the dignity of the churches, 
and to lower the standard of morality. 

It may be said, indeed, that the constitution of a central, definite, gen- 
erally recognizable, and indisputable, ecclesiastical authority among all 
Baptist churches is the last and greatest triumph of Baptist church govern- 
ment. And all this has been achieved under the blessings of God, without 
ecclesiastical legislation. The history of Baptist church jurisprudence is 
that of the evolution and growth of customary rules out of the law of the 
gospel developed by the innate genius of our people, and of the conscious 
modification or extension of those rules by a series of tentative ecclesiastical 
authorities, operating from without the local churches. A final reconcilia- 
tion and balance between the rival influences is achieved so soon as a recog- 
nizable authority exists, which is in perfect harmony with the Scriptures, 
and the tendencies and aspirations of the denominational life. Every 
improvement that is introduced into the rules of Baptist church juris- 
prudence ; every attempt that is made to promote uniformity, certainty and 
harmony ; every effort that is made in arriving at a oneness of will, faith 
and practice, and of interpretative method on the part of the members of 
different churches ; all point to the gradual elaboration among our people 
of what may be properly called a supreme ecclesiastical authority, which 
must be acknowledged before this form of poKty can attain to the dignity 
of a government. Baptists should beware, however, lest this authority of 
the future take the form of a bishop or pope of an universal church, sup- 
ported by that kind of force which will destroy the independence of the 
churches of Christ. Unless Baptists be on their guard as to what form this 
authority will take, it may be impossible for us, in this generation, so much 
as to guess ; just as the Catholics, Presbyterians and Methodists had no 
materials from which to construct a notion of their present unscriptural sys- 
tems of church government, as we see them now in operation. He whose 
error proceeds from the authority of a teacher or an interpreter of the Scrip- 
tures publicly authorized, such as a professor in our theological seminaries, 
or that of a pastor, is a hundredfold more dangerous than he whose error 
proceeds from the voluntary pursuit of his own reasoning. For what is 
taught by one who teaches by public authority, the church is supposed to 
teach, and has a resemblance to law, tiU the same authority controls or 
overrules it. 

It is necessary to give this general idea of ecclesiastical authority which 
prevails, and must prevail, over all the churches of Christ, and which binds 
them together in the order of independent sovereignties. For siuce it is by 



190 A TREATISE UP02T BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

these ties that God engages the churches to all the different duties, and that 
he has put into each engagement the foundations of the duties which depend 
on it, it is in these sources that we ought to find the principles and the spirit 
of the laws of the gospel, in order that the churches might be one in will, 
faith and practice. Every Baptist being a member of a local church, every 
one ought to discharge in it his duties and his functions, according to the 
demands of this universal law of the gospel. That every particular Baptist 
being linked to this body of the denomination of which be is a member, he 
ought to undertake nothing that may disturb the order of it. And this 
implies the engagement of submission and obedience to that general author- 
ity which God has established for maintaining this order. And when this 
divine authority links churches together that are animated by the spirit of 
the gospel of Christ, there is formed immediately between them a union of 
fellowship proportioned to the reciprocal duties of the obligations which 
they are under one to another. And if each of them finds in the other 
qualities proper to unite them more closely together, their union becomes 
permanent and perpetual. This ecclesiastical union has two essential char- 
acters : one, that they ought to be reciprocal ; and the other, that they 
ought to be free. They are reciprocal, because they cannot be formed under 
our polity, but by the mutual fellowship of the churches ; and they are free, 
because one church is not obliged to tie itself to those churches not of its 
own faith and order, and have not the requisite qualities that are proper to 
form this voluntary union. 

The wider the influence of the usages and customs of the churches, the 
wider will be the influence of the laws : that is, the greater the number of 
people who wdll contribute to the formation of what we here term denomina- 
tional opinion, the stronger will be the authority of the government of the 
churches. In every system of church government where the institutions are 
moulded on the democratic or popular model, the standard of both laws and 
usages -^ill be elevated. In Baptist church government the usages and cus- 
toms have necessarily a more extensive influence than in any other form of 
church government. Denominational opinion, therefore, has a more direct 
influence upon the execution as well as upon the formation of the laws of our 
churches. In all other systems the laws are devised by the few. The opin- 
ions of the many and the few are thus placed in an antagonistic relation to 
each other. In Baptist churches and institutions the spirit of obedience is 
still stronger than elsewhere, as is shown by the fact that there is no formal 
ecclesiastical government, outside of the churches, erected to keep them in 
forcible subjection. But, as a general rule, the laws, customs and usages of 
the churches are somewhat in advance of denominational opinion. The 
wider the sphere of their influence, therefore, the more powerfully will they 
act upon the manners and customs, and the manners and customs will be 
rendered more and more auxiliary to the execution of the laws of the 
churches. Here, then, also, what is termed the denominational opinion is 
obliged to take a direction favorable to the common good, and unfavorable 
to the selfish views of individuals. In this way the opinion of all is brought 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 191 

to bear upon each ; and hence it is that in a democratic system of church 
government, where the government appears to be wanting in ecclesiastical 
authority, and individuals to possess unbounded freedom, what is termed 
denominational opinion is armed with so much power, inspires so general a 
respect for the laws and so much terror on the infraction of them. 

Taking this view of ecclesiastical government, I am constrained to believe, 
and I am equally certain that the Scriptures teach, that there is a secret gov- 
ernment of God over his churches in the whole universe. Christ said that 
the gates of hell should not prevail against his churches, which means that 
he will uphold and preserve them by his almighty power. This he does by 
virtue of the ecclesiastical authority that he bestows upon his churches. But 
we ought to be sensible, that it has a foundation which is much more essen- 
tial, and much more solid, which is the providence of God over his true 
churches, and that order in which he preserves his people in all times, and 
in all places, by his almighty power and infinite wisdom. There need be no 
bishop, cardinal or pope to rule over these churches, for Christ alone is the 
supreme ruler. For it is always the almighty providence of God that dis- 
poses of that chain and series of events wliich have guided the churches 
through all their trials and tribulations. Thus, it is always he who moulds 
them after the models of the primitive churches ; it is from him alone that 
they derive all the power and authority they have ; and it is the ministry of 
the laws of the gospel that is committed to them. It is for the preserving of 
the truth and the order of his gospel on earth that he gives to his churches 
the right to administer his ordinances, and to make the laws and regulations 
that are necessary for the good of the whole denomination, according to dif- 
ferent times and places ; and the power of instituting such discipline as will 
keep his churches pure. It is to settle and confirm all these uses of the 
authority of the churches that God commands aU members to be subject 
to them. 

This is the law of the gospel converted into the ecclesiastical law of the 
churches, and all executive power naturaUy belongs to each local church in 
its fuUest extent, and it is the church's province to have them put in execu- 
tion. There is embraced in every law that which enables some proper au- 
thority to command, to judge, and to discipline for disobedience, for it would 
be futile to say, do this, or do that, unless there be a power in that tribunal 
that commands, to judge whether the thing commanded be performed, and 
likewise some authority to enjoin obedience. Hence there must be a law- 
giver, an inferior subject, a command and a power in the law-giver, result- 
ing from some organic relation between the subject and himself, to enforce 
the command. This blending of religion with ecclesiastical polity, and the 
commitment of both to the administration of the same church, constitutes 
one of the most beautiful features of church jurisprudence. It is this which, 
in the temporal order of church polity, generates and sets the church in mo- 
tion, and gives to it all the power it has. From which it follows, that seeing 
religion and church polity have only the same principle of di\ane order, they 
do agree together and support one another mutually in such a way that those 



192 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

belonging to tlie churcli may be able to pay punctual and faithful obedience 
both to the one and to the other ; and that the same members who are em- 
ployed in the ministry of the one, and the administration of the other may 
do so according to the spirit and the canons which reconcile them together. 
According to these principles Baptists acknowledge no other system of eccle- 
siastic law except the Scriptures, acknowledged to be such by the churches, 
supplemented by such interpretations as have been established either by the 
general consent of the membership, or by an insensible usage which gives 
them the force and authority of laws. For if every church should be obliged 
to take for God's law whatever extravagant interpretations private men, 
under pretense of authority, should obtrude upon them, it were impossible 
that any divine law should be kept in its purity, and the polity of Christ's 
churches be kept within the bounds marked by the letter and spirit of that law. 

There are two properties inseparable from the Baptist form of church 
government ; the one a capacity to receive impressions from well-authentic 
denominational public opinion, the other a power of reacting upon the 
churches. There is no contradiction between the two things nor any inter- 
ference the one with the other. On the contrary, the last is the natural con- 
sequence of the first The use of this opinion is to inspire the churches with 
confidence, fortitude and resolution, whenever denominational afiairs are well 
conducted ; and to impress it with distrust and a want of confidence, when- 
ever the contrary is the case. These two forces act in different directions, 
and yet both tend to the same result, thus causing the leaders of denomina- 
tional affairs to exercise a more prudent, and therefore a more effective influ- 
ence til an they could otherwise do. This democratic form of government 
will then possess the two properties just mentioned, in a greater perfection, 
than any other form of church government. It possesses the capacity of 
receiving impressions from without, because it is the creature of the public 
mil ; it has the power of reacting upon the churches, not only because it is 
powerfully supported by this denominational public opinion, but because the 
disturbances which will occur can never in the nature of things be more than 
local. Free ecclesiastical government, such as Baptists enjoy, introduces 
heart-burnings . enough sometimes, but these only constitute a state of disci- 
pline, by which men are rendered more wise, more prudent and more just 
than they otherwise would be. A vast field is left open to individual liberty, 
so that the mind, instead of being deprived of its elasticity and vigor in the 
free interpretation of God's word, is incessantly braced to fresh exertions, in 
order to turn all church difficulties to the best account. 

Thus we have endeavored to lay down some of the principles of trust- 
worthy authority in the formation of religious opinions. The subject is 
one of practical importance in Baptist church jurisprudence from the fact 
that Baptists have no legislative tribunal to embody the principles of religion 
and church polity into a written system as others have. And inasmuch as 
a resort must be made somewhere for a system of laws in all matters where 
the Scriptures do not go into detail, an attempt has been made to determine 
the marks by which guides in matters of opinion may be recognized, to ascer- 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 193 

tain the legitimate province of authority, and to discover the conditions most 
conducive to its beneficial influence. It is very evident from the study of 
these principles, that one of the main elements of Baptist church govern- 
ment is faith, and well-placed confidence. A disposition to confide, to have 
faith, combined with a knowledge how to choose competent guides, and with 
a careful exercise of that choice, is both a mark of a highly spiritualized 
church, and a means of further religious improvement. On the other hand, 
a general tendency to distrust, unbelief and suspicion, combined with a blind 
deference to dishonest, ignorant and unfit guides, is a sure mark of a stag- 
nant and backward state of Christian development and a hindrance to 
ulterior progress. Perhaps, however, the prevalence of distrust is more often 
owing to the want of safe guides than to a popular dislike of the principle of 
authority. It appears to be a frequent occurrence, in churches not well 
informed and undeveloped, that men are willing to waive their exercise of 
the right of private judgment, but place their faith in impostors and mis- 
leaders, who are candidates for their confidence, but are unworthy of it, who 
seek to act as their trustees, but are unfit for the trust. 

That there is a strong inclination to the adoption of the opinions of com- 
petent judges, when competent judges can be clearly discerned to exist, is 
plain from the deference which is universally paid to the opinions and 
authority of the great men of our denomination, many of whom could be 
mentioned here. If there were a body of authority upon rehgious and eccle- 
siastical subjects, equally fulfilling the conditions which entitle it to pubHc 
respect ; if the choice of Baptists was not distracted by a love of religious 
liberty, freedom of thought and of action upon questions in this department 
of knowledge, it might be presumed that they would be equally inclined with 
others to place themselves under that guidance. Every one may, however, 
within his own sphere, and by his own wisdom and prudence, contribute his 
share to the accompKshment of this end ; and the denomination may thus 
approach more and more to a state in which trustworthy opinion and true 
church government will constantly predominate over theory and speculation, 
and wisdom will be diffused from various sources, until this peculiar form of 
government shall become strong enough to prevent and restrain many of the 
disorders that now unavoidably arise. Under the operation of these influ- 
ences it will be found that an increased knowledge of these afl^airs which 
accompanies progressive development is not inconsistent with ecclesiastical 
tranquillity; that the extension of freedom of religious thought and the 
glorious doctrine of soul liberty among Baptists does not promote ecclesiasti- 
cal anarchy, and that the principles of trustworthy authority in church gov- 
ernment will become stronger than a disposition towards church discord and 
division. How then can Baptist church jurisprudence become trustworthy 
in matters of religious opinion ? By an open Bible, a sound ministry, a free 
church and not least by an untrammeled denominational press conducted by 
our wisest and ablest editors of which last feature we will speak in another 
part of this Treatise. 
13 



194 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JTJKISPETJDENCE ; 



CHAPTER YII. 

ECCLESIASTICAL PRECEDENTS AND TRADITIONS; THEIR RELATION TO 
CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 

ECCLESIASTICAL jurisprudence proposes to itself nothing else than to 
find a common will, in which the individual will, and the general 
will are coherently united. This jurisprudence, in its most general signifi- 
cation, is the necessary outgrowth, resulting from the nature of the churches 
which it is to govern. The progressive development of the churches of 
Christ have been that, amidst such a diversity of customs and usages, they 
were not solely conducted by, and left to, the caprice of fancy. The history 
of this unique kind of law is only the consequences of first principles, in 
whicK every particular part is connected with another, as sequence and con- 
sequence — all being linked together in a stable and uniform system of rules. 
All other systems, even those of long standing, are but a chaos of incoherent 
and arbitrary notions and precedents, brought in from various sources, from 
the ancient schools, from the fathers, the canons, the casuistical theologians, 
the Jews and the Romans, as well as from the practice and sentiments of 
every secular government extant in the world, from which they could draw 
analogies. Hence symmetry and stability are not characteristic of these sys- 
tems. Whereas Baptists are advancing in their development, getting nearer 
to the truths of the Scriptures. They move slowly, it is true, but there is 
nothing of which they ought to be so convinced as the slowness of true 
progress. 

In all the various forms of church government now extant in the world, 
there are two tendencies which equally lead to error. The one exaggerates 
diversity of opinion, the other exaggerates unity and centralization. The 
latter has to fear the shoals of a centralized church despotism, the former is 
equally exposed to anarchy. Immobility is the character of the one, pro- 
gressive development that of the other. The new Testament form of 
church government is that of freedom and independence, a government in 
which Christ is sole king and law-maker, and each member a free citizen, 
having a voice in the administration of the laws of the kingdom. This 
insures diversity of opinion, arising from a difierence of individuality, and 
at the same time it cannot be overlooked that it begets a species of liberty, 
often arising from man's ungovernable nature. 

Hence it becomes important that we should inquire what efiect ecclesiasti- 
cal precedents and traditiong have in the formation of Baptist church juris- 
prudence. This inquiry becomes the more important, because it is by pre- 
cedents and traditions alone that the polity of the churches can be marred, 



OS, THE COMMOI^" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 195 

and error engrafted upon the system. In the economy of those churches 
that feel at liberty to resort to ecclesiastical legislation to effect changes, all 
that is necessary is to introduce such written rules as are necessary to effect 
the object sought. But, in the Bible form of church government changes, 
if effected at all, must grow up gradually, and all the churches must by 
common consent adopt them, and, until all churches do agree to their 
adoption, they do not rise to the dignity of a church custom, and have no 
place in the body of the law. 

It has been shown heretofore that not everything done in a sister church 
is authority for another, and worthy of imitation. Precedents are such 
decisions as usually arise in churches in a time and state of discord and 
agitation, and are apt to become contrary one to another. Under such cir- 
cumstances, we ought not to follow a multitude to do evil. Let us not 
inquire what is the most usual and customary in churches in a state of tur- 
moil, but seek to measure our conduct by those rules generated in a state of 
peace and prosperity. The example of an agitated church is the worst pre- 
cedent in the world to follow. We should look after those things that may 
place us in the condition of peace, not those things which agree with the 
confused voices of an agitated church. All the upheavals in churches are 
but the deformities of the system, and, instead of serving as precedents to 
follow, they are but beacon lights erected along the shore to warn of danger. 

Some one has said, " A wrecker, who lives from the goods of foundered 
vessels and shipwrecked crews, knows where all the dangerous rocks are 
along the coast, and he is always hovering about them. But the ship-master 
knows more about the channel than about the reefs." A calm, self-possessed 
captain of a vessel was asked, " Captain, I suppose you know where every 
rock and shoal is along this whole coast; do you not?" "I know where 
they are notj' was his reply, '' which is the more important thing." 

While true church government in a state of peace is but the beaten chan- 
nel, yet it is also true that the churches sometimes fall into the hands of those 
who steer the ship either in ignorance or wantonness, and the breakers are 
thereby encountered. It is also a sad confession that it is too often the case 
that we find discordant spirits in the churches, who, like the wreckers, are 
more conversant about the breakers along the coast than about the channel. 

A precedent is something done that may serve as an example to authorize 
a subsequent act, of the like kind, but has no authority out of itself. Plence 
we are accustomed to look with suspicion upon any act which needs to be 
propped by citing mere precedents, for if the matter decided is in harmony 
with the great body of the law, that law is an universal principle long since 
acknowledged by all the churches, and being coherent and universal, there 
is nothing to distinguish it from the body of the customary law, and there 
can be no precedent in it. To say that isolated precedents, or even a line of 
them in the same church, has any influence upon the action of the churches 
in forming a true system of church government would be to say that any 
successful transgression of ecclesiastical power would at once establish the 
right of trangressing it forever. Surely the first unwarranted act had n© 



196 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

precedent. The consequence may therefore be seen ; every precedent would 
beget a worse, and the churches of to-day would soon become as much per- 
verted and distorted as those of other systems can possibly be. Had the 
early churches taken every such act as a precedent and justification of simi- 
lar and subsequent ones church government would soon have become per- 
verted, and in a short time subversive of every principle upon which true 
church law is constructed. If we would go back over the long history of 
the churches we would find in every age some ecclesiastical precedent that 
was sought to be fastened upon the churches which, if followed, would have 
led the churches astray and changed the whole tenor of their being. 

A church precedent, in and of itself, merely as a thing that has happened, 
or been done, has no binding authority one way or the other, and the com- 
mon sense rule that that which was wroag in the beginning could not be- 
come right in the course of time by being repeated, is too deeply engraven 
upon the mind to be doubted, and in building up this system of church law, 
this principle is found to have been acted upon. It may be set down as a 
sound principle that the more the advocates of a certain act or omission feel 
themselves obliged to rely on precedents to justify their conduct, the less 
they ought to be trusted, and on no account ought precedents alone to decide 
anything in church or denominational afi^airs if doubts exist at all. One 
church being entirely free and independent of another, but all being equal, 
a measure decided in one is no reason why that decision should be followed 
in another, only in so far as it is correct, and in that view persuasive only of 
what is right. To contend otherwise would be fo contend that one church 
has a right to make laws for another. Neither is the same church bound by 
any former decisions of its own, except in so far as rights and church privi- 
leges have become vested by those decisions. Otherwise one set of members 
might forever commit their successors to a course of action which might be 
erroneous ; for predecessors have no more power than they leave to their 
successors, since the power of both are equal. In no case is a church bound 
to go on doing a thing because they themselves, or others, had done it before 
them, or merely because the motives for doing it before still continue to ope- 
rate upon them. Each member is in duty bound to scrutinize the motives 
and the reasons that prompted the act, and to ask himself whether upon re- 
flection, or a better understanding, he ought to continue the precedent. They 
must be convinced that those who before them adopted the measure in question, 
acted with them on the same principles, or on principles they acknowledge 
to be good, and were not prompted through sinister motives, but that the 
measures were carefully adopted in accordance with the Scriptures and the 
customary law itself. 

There is but one view in which it is safe to adhere to precedents, and that 
is where unwarranted encroachments upon the fundamental principles of the 
churches are sought to be made in the name of church law. Then it is safe to 
stand upon precedents, if there be any, opposite to power, or an undue in- 
crease of power. In that case the air of revolutionary innovation, or rebellious 
resistance, is wholly taken away from the act, and the charge of revolution is 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 197 

thrown on the other party. Whenever ecclesiastical power is suspected to 
have been unduly exercised or distorted, let the case be decided on its own 
merits, because it is the natural, inherent and necessary attribute of all 
powei* that it tends to increase. If denominational precedents were always 
entitled to respect, they would only increase and propel the power, instead 
of regulating the measure and effect thereof. It rarely ever fails that when 
a principle of ecclesiastical law has been disregarded and overturned that 
those who have done so did but protest that the denominational welfare de- 
manded the violation. It is true on the other hand that those churches 
that encourage such disorders never fail to gradually decline and fall to ruin 
under the scrutinizing eye of the very denomination for whose welfare they 
pretended to act as the result of their offending. Denominational welfare is 
a matter of vast importance, but it does not rise higher than the laws that 
have been developed by the denomination for its own use. 

It is not only from denominational precedents or glaring innovations that 
the Baptist system of church law has mainly to guard itself. It is a very 
rare thing to see any organized system, as old and deeply rooted as that of 
Baptist church government, openly and boldly opposed. It is against silent 
and gradual attacks it ought to be particularly on its guard. Sudden inno- 
vations strike the imaginations of men ; they become part of the detailed 
history of the denomination. Their secret springs and sources are under- 
stood. But changes that insensibly happen by a long train of steps that are 
but slightly marked are overlooked until violence is done and the system 
marred. In all such cases it cannot be insisted that general acquiescence 
has taken place. 

On the other hand, while precedents and innovations on settled customs 
are to be avoided, the lateness of time at which a new principle is intro- 
duced is not a strong argument against its soundness, if it be in accord with 
the Scriptures, otherwise Bacon's saying wiU be verified, that " they who 
reverence too much old times, are but a scorn to the new." These new prin- 
ciples, however, must be formed out of that same law and be in strict harmony 
with it. We then have a standard indicated by itself, according to which 
we may judge whether it be correct. Precedents being but the debris of 
other systems, they become delusive and dangerous in the same degree as 
those systems are foreign to the New Testament plan. It has been an ob- 
servation among Baptists as old as the denomination itself that whenever an 
ancient church custom, for which the reason perhaps could not be readily 
given, has been wantonly broken in upon by new practices and precedents, 
the wisdom of the custom in the end appeared from the disastrous results 
that followed the innovation. Likewise with respect to customs which taken 
separately seem trifling, and even trivial, but tend to influence the future 
transactions of the churches, it is more important that they be strictly fol- 
lowed than that they should be theoretically correct, and should not be 
abolished, and others set up of doubtful propriety at the instance of " living 
oracles not well inspired." 

A precedent in church polity is a principle applied to a new class of cases 



198 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

or a new priEcipie applied to old cases, as for that, which in the variety of 
practical church-life has offered itself. It is not absolute, and does not pos- 
sess binding power merely as a fact, or an occurrence. Nor is it unchange- 
able. It can be overruled, and for the safety and stability of Baptist church 
government it often ought to be overruled. But, then, it must be done by 
the law itself, and that which upsets the precedent cannot otherwise than 
become, in the independent life of the law of the church, precedent in turn 
until it becomes the universally received customary law of the whole denom- 
ination. Hence Baptists have a great fear of precedents, for we can fre- 
quently point to the fact that the most atrocious departures from true church 
government and doctrine were founded upon precedent, either real or pre- 
sumed. On the other hand we know that true ecclesiastical polity in the 
past has been rescued from a centralized church despotism in a great measure 
by resting the system on the common law of the gospel, without the aid of 
either precedent or ecclesiastical legislation. This has been the anchor to 
the ship of church. It is the tap root with which the church of Christ 
fastens itself in the Holy Scriptures, and through which it receives the sap 
of ecclesiastical life and being. It is the weapon by which interference is 
warded of. The churches could not have developed themselves upon true 
principles without it. It consists in the fundamentals of Baptist church 
polity laid down in received and recognized customs and usages ; and the 
common law principles in it are a far greater portion than the Scripture rules 
themselves. The constitution of every Baptist church is chiefly a common 
law constitution, and this reflex of a continuous church in a constitution of 
gospel law, is more truly philosophical than the theoretic and systematic, but 
lifeless constitutions of every other church in existence. 

Baptist church government is that form of polity in which each local 
cliurch exercises directly the functions of government. This form in theory 
must always be unlimited except by the law of the gospel itself. But as the 
gospel is so scant in its rules as to the exact powers of the church, we must 
look to the apostolic churches themselves, in action, for the limitation of the 
powers appropriate to them. The lengths to which they went in the govern- 
ment of themselves, we may go, and beyond which we dare not go, although 
we have a thousand precedents for so doing. If they were organic units, 
were self-governing, and independent one of another, so must we keep them 
forever. We should look to see whether they were monarchic in form, in 
which one man ruled, or aristocratic, in which a few ruled, or whether they 
were democratic in their organization, in and by which the membership ruled 
themselves. Christ and his apostles, in the institution of the churches, might 
have made them separate organic units, free and independent one of another, 
and yet have made them monarchic, aristocratic or democratic in the form 
of their government. In other words th.ey might have ordained that each 
should be ruled by the pastor alone, or by a select body of men, as by the 
pastor and deacons. But in this inquiry we are not concerned so much 
about what Christ and the apostles might have done, as we are as to what 
they did in this important particular. Suffice it to say that ecclesiastical 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 199 

government is either what Christ and his apostles made it in the beginning, 
or what man has made it since by precedent or otherwise. It is true in fact 
that no system of ecclesiastical government, whether ancient or modern, 
whether true or false, is a scientific necessity. It is what those who instituted 
it made it to be, whether human or divine. 

The like sentence a thousand times repeated by a church or several 
churches is not enough to show that the sentence is Scriptural. For whatso- 
ever action is against the law of the gospel, though it be reiterated ever so 
often, or that there be ever so many precedents thereof, is still against the 
law of the gospel, and therefore not the law of the church, but contrary to 
it. Has sprinkling for baptism become the law of the gospel because it has 
been practiced by pseudo churches for a thousand years in the past? Thus we 
see how church precedents are misleading in their nature, and how they per- 
vert and mar a system of church government and doctrine ; whereas the 
influence of long-established customs and usages rooted and grounded in the 
Holy Scriptures tends to mould men and churches after one pattern, and 
destroys that desire for change and innovation which has been so destructive 
to true church polity and doctrine. Ancient usage and custom directs all 
things in one channel, and institutes an unvarying routine which never 
leaves a beaten track and never goes into the by-ways in search of innova- 
tions which when followed up may ultimately prove the destruction of that 
which the Lord has instituted. These long-established customs and usages 
have the effect of hampering Baptists, and confining them to one fixed and 
constantly observed system of polity which is fixed by the laws of the gospel. 
See how hard it is for Baptists to break from its power, and how it tends to 
hold them in one beaten path — in the old ways — ^while it destroys all versa- 
tility and originality so far as changing the form of church government is 
concerned. The tendency of a free church and an open Bible is to strengthen 
our lovefor the original form of church polity, and to cultivate a sameness 
of doctrine and churches in their development and progress. This influence 
has a powerful eflTect in throwing oflT all unmeaning precedents and foreign 
traditions, and fixing these long-established usages and customs unalterably 
upon the churches of Christ. This yoke of usage and custom puts upon this 
divine system a sanction and a penalty so fearful that no Baptist would 
dream of not conforming to it, and this veneration for gospel law so fixed 
grows stronger and stronger with the generations. 

There is no point in regard to which Baptist church government presents 
so marked a contrast to other systems as in the recognition of a province 
within which government shall not intrude itself nor permit intrusion from 
any other quarter. In this system it is the sovereignty or power vested in 
the hands of the membership, back of the government which defines and 
defends the form of ecclesiastical polity, not only against all precedents 
extra-ecclesiastical, but also against all other arbitrary encroachments of the 
government itself. This supreme power back of, and separate from, the 
machinery of the government, vests the ruling majority with the power to 
interpret the laws of the gospel in behalf of church rights and immunities 



200 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

regardless of precedents and to defend the same against the arbitrary acts 
and encroachments from whatever other source they may come. Those who 
band together to form a church, both for their highest development and the 
highest welfare of the church in which they live, should act freely within a 
certain defined sphere ; the impulse to such action is a universal quality of 
all Christians ; but the church, the ultimate sovereign, is alone able to define 
the elements of church independence and individual liberty, limit its scope 
and protect its enjoyment. Both the church and the individual members are 
defended in this sphere against the government, by the power which organizes 
and maintains, and can put an end to the government ; and by the same 
power, through the government guard against encroachments from every 
quarter, whether from within or without. The individual may ask for liber- 
ties and privileges which it has not granted, but until the church grants 
them he certainly has them not. The ultimate sovereignty, the church, can 
neither be changed or limited, either by individual liberty or governmental 
powers ; and this it would be if individual liberty had its source outside the 
church. This is the only view which can reconcile religious liberty with the 
law of the gospel and preserves both in proper balance. Every other view 
sacrifices the one to the other. 

Therefore no church's error becomes its own law, nor is that church 
obliged to persist in it ; neither does it become a law to other churches. A 
precedent made by an individual church may become the leading decision of 
that church for all future cases of the same import, until, by the constant 
ruling of the churches upon the same subject matter overruling the particu- 
lar case, they should reverse it ; whereupon it becomes the duty of the church 
to change its decision to conform to the general usage of the churches in 
general, and by that means the Scripturalness of the law is virtually decided 
in a natural, easy, legitimate and safe manner, according to the principle of 
the supremacy of the law of the gospel and the independence of the churches. 
This is one of the most interesting and important evolutions of Baptist 
church jurisprudence, and certainly one of the greatest protections of the 
churches. In our system it may be called the very palladium of Baptist 
church government, one of the best fruits of the Baptist mind and heart. 
Churches succeed one another ; one set of members pass away, others come 
and take their places ; nay Heaven and earth shall pass, but not one jot or 
tittle of the immutable laws of Christ's churches shall pass away. Therefore 
all the decisions of all the precedent churches that have ever been cannot 
altogether make a new landmark, or lay the predicate for one contrary to 
the true genius of his churches. Nor can any precedent of any former 
church warrant an innovation upon fundamental principles, nor discharge 
the churches of to-day of the trouble of studying what is the true Bible rule 
in the case. For the church that makes an innovation judges unjustly, and 
no injustice can be a pattern of judgment to succeeding churches ; for pre- 
cedents prove what was done, and not what was well done, and to build on 
false grounds, the more we build the greater is the ruin. 

Hence to make Baptist church government fixed and stable, it must be 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 201 

contended that any practice which has no coherence of principle gotten by 
long study, practice, observation and experience, and is not universally ac- 
cepted by all Baptist churches, has no place in church jurisprudence. The 
formula of words and the precedents of the churches do not admit of an 
extension into like cases. For what departs from custom gotten by long 
experience is wanting in authority, and the introduction of new things cor- 
rupts the majesty of the old. Modern customs have less authority, as the 
most ancient examples should be received cautiously inasmuch as the course 
of time changes many things. Therefore the customs of the middle times are 
the safest and the best. 

It might be considered by some that the term customary law, as applied 
to Baptist church polity, is unfortunate, and might lead to the following train 
of reasoning : As it supplies principles where the Scriptures do not furnish 
a rule, and in such cases something must be done, custom was indifferent as 
to what was done, and that after all precedent and arbitrary will gave the 
decision. That when the same case occurred it was more convenient to 
repeat the same precedent than to think of a new one, and with every new 
repetition this proceeding appeared more convenient and natural. Thus 
after some time such a rule became a law, which originally had no more 
claim to validity than the opposite rule. Hence according to this train of 
reasoning the fundamental origin of this law was precedent alone. 

No doubt but that this view is correct when the precedent is not based 
upon a written law such as the Scriptures, or as in civil government the 
statute law, to prescribe the bounds beyond which it cannot go. The Scrip- 
ture was in the beginning the natural basis of the law arising out of it, and 
is its natural origin, and has its existence, its reality, in the Scriptures. We 
recognize this law in external acts, usages, manners and customs. In the 
uniformity of a continued and enduring mode of action, we recognize its 
common TOot quite distinct from mere precedent. Customs and usages are 
the signs of Baptist church jurisprudence, and not its foundation. It is of a 
two-fold element— one Scripture and the other customary law, evidenced 
by usage. 

It is the Scriptures which are always, and customary law which 13 frequent. 
That which is frequent is next to that which is always. It is possible, and 
in many instances profitable, that customary law should be changed, but 
the Scriptures never, the Scriptures being a transcript of the wisdom of 
Christ, the founder of the churches, and not a product of experience, as cus- 
tom is. The sense of this is, that Scripture is the first bond of the laws of 
the churches, and custom is the next, for Scripture is nothing but the law of 
Christ, given us for the preservation of custom. Customary law is the 
record, but the Scriptures were the first declaration of it, and till then cus- 
tom had not all the solemnities of a law, though it was adopted by each 
church, and practiced ever so long. For Paul said. But for the law, I had 
not known sin. If the Gentiles, having not the law, might become a law 
unto themselves, much more may we be so, in matters indifferent, where the 
Scriptures do not furnish a guide. In all these indifferent or customary 



202 A TREATISE VVO^ BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

laws there was variety, aud, although they were in danger of being over- 
thrown by mere precedents and the arbitrary will of man, they were in 
time maintained and cemented by what will be treated of hereafter as eccle- 
siastical authority, and kept by the spirit of Christ, who was pleased in his 
love for the churches to put into the hearts of his disciples, that they might 
be governed by laws which would not fail. 

So customary laws are after the Scriptures in point of time and nature, 
and are such licenses as are left when there is no rule specified. When a 
church is to ordain laws suitable to be observed, it is not possible it should 
comprehend all cases, or all the different phases of the same case, that may 
arise ; but as time shall instruct them by the discovery of new principles, so 
are also laws from time to time to be ordained, and, in all such cases where 
the Scriptures do not go into detail, customary law obtains, and the church 
gives sentence according to it. The Scriptures, by which the action of the 
churches are abridged, are written, because there is no other way whereby 
Christ could make them known, and hand them down to his churches ; 
whereas customary laws are supposed to be written in men's hearts and 
memories. The Scriptures, then, are the constitutions of the churches 
expressed ; and customary laws are such as arise out of the Scriptures, and 
are in strict conformity thereto. Hence custom of itself makes no law, and 
under no circumstances do precedents. Nevertheless, when a church makes 
a sentence, whenever the same is right and Scriptural, it attains the vigor of 
a law ; not because the sentence has by custom been given in a like case, but 
because the church is supposed tacitly to have approved of the sentence, 
and thereby it comes to be a law, and numbered among the customary 
laws of the church. For if precedent was sufficient to introduce a law of 
itself, then it would be in the power of every church that is to pass upon a 
matter, if it did so erroneously to make its erroneous precedents to become 
laws. In like manner those principles laid down in commentaries and com- 
pendiums of church law by those learned in the law are not, therefore, laws, 
and have no binding authority, except the same be reasonable and Scrip- 
tural from the beginning. 

The divine commandments and precepts, such, for example, as that of 
the mode of Baptism, need no prescription, but have an intrinsic warrant, 
authority and a perpetual abode in the Scriptures ; but that which is war- 
ranted by custom, has but an accidental obligation, and is of human 
authority, such as sprinkling for Baptism. The laws of Christ are the 
parents of custom, but precedents cannot introduce a divine law or obliga- 
tion. All Baptist church customs are, and of necessity ought to be, accord- 
ing to Christ's commandment, but from mere precedents we cannot conclude 
or infer that anything fundamental is the command of Christ. No church 
can prescribe Scriptural truths ; thsy have their abode in the Scriptures. 
For precedents proper must commonly begin from weakness and ignorance 
of what the rule ought to be, and in time get strength by use, until they 
prevail even against right. But Christ does not call himself precedent, but 
truth. Therefore, whatsoever is against the Scriptures, though it be an old 
and continuous precedent, is heresy, notwithstanding its long usage. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 203 

The purpose of this rule is not to bar custom from being of use in the 
exposition of the sense of a law or doctrine. For when it is certain that 
Christ gave the law, and it is uncertain what sense was intended, custom is 
very useful, and, in true church jurisprudence, is the only way to interpret 
it ; that is the custom of the first and best ages of the churches ; and, then, 
the longer the custom did descend, still we have the more confidence in it, 
because we have all the wise and good men of so many ages concur- 
ring in the interpretation and understanding of the law. Custom is the 
best reason, when we have no better ; but, when we have neither Scripture 
nor analogy to support it, it is the most unartificial of all arguments, and 
a good reason to the contrary is much to be preferred before a long, con- 
tinuous custom. A truly evangelical church is certainly guided by the spirit 
of Christ, and, therefore, where the question is concerning matters that are 
not clear in the Scriptures, the customs of the churches are not to be 
ignored ; for it is to be presumed, when the contrary is not proved, that the 
endeavors of a pious membership are graciously assisted by the spirit of 
Christ, and in this sense custom is the best interpreter, because, in the 
absence of the power to legislate and to prescribe rules, there is no better, 
and no clearer light shining from any source. 

Thus, custom can, in cases indifferent, declare the meaning of a law ; but 
it must be emphasized that a precedent of, and standing alone by itself, can 
be the interpreter of the will of Christ, or the sufficient warrant of a law, 
or immediately bind the conscience, as if it were a signification of the 
divine pleasiu*e ; much less it should not be opposed to any words of the 
Scripture, or reason, or proper arguments derived from them. If it has a 
coherence of principle, it then yields to authority, to law, and to enlight- 
ened reason, and, when it thus agrees with the laws of Christ, it should be 
kept inviolate. When it is both pious and reasonable, and of the analogy 
of the Scriptures, it is an excellent corroboration of the truth, but when it 
stands alone, as a precedent simply, it is very suspicious and very dangerous, 
and is a very ill sign of an ill cause, or corrupted manners. Hence 
neither precedent nor tradition has any place in Baptist church juris- 
prudence, as will be shown in its proper place. Because, through tradition, 
many errors have crept into the religious systems of men, and have trans- 
mitted her authority to that which ought to be destroyed. 

It is only when customs and precedents have shaped themselves into a 
constant uniformity, only when their characteristics of the past can be a 
clear light for their incidents in the future, that they rise to the level of a 
Baptist church law, which is the material out of which true unwritten 
church law is made. In other words, the law does not consist in isolated 
precedents, but in general principles. Bible rules of church government 
are the gift of Christ, and must be received from Christ, while customary 
law and precedents must be formed, tested and tried before adopted. To 
keep this distinction in mind is of the most practical importance. We 
should go to the study of the Bible for rules of polity, with faith in the 
Bible, as a complete guide, and our opinions should be drawn therefrom, 



204 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

and not take our opinions ready-made from others ; they ought to be our 
own. Neither ought we to take our faith in the Bible from the church, but 
to take from the Bible our opinions of the church, its doctrines and its laws. 
It is the first of laws, and it governs the churches as much as it does each 
member of the church ; and, as it is the first of laws, it cannot be modified 
by a law, and it is proper, therefore, that the church should obey the Bible 
in preference to any man-made law or precedent of the churches, and make 
it the ground of their decisions. In so doing it should be foreign to the 
purpose of any church to generate and practice any custom which they 
could not prove by Scripture. Custom in these things is to the Scripture as 
a sun-glass to the sun, it receives its rays in a focus, and thus unites their 
strength. 

The efiect of this is that Christ alone is our law-giver, and, instead of 
leaving any authority to formulate a code of written laws for our govern- 
ment, he has made our hearts to be the tables of the laws of his churches, 
that they might not be perverted, but always be there under the eye of the 
churches, legible and clear. It is not a law for being placed there ; but 
Christ first made or decreed it to be a law, and then placed it there for use 
and promulgation, so that each succeeding member, church and age might 
test it and compare it with Christ's word, to see whether those who have 
gone before were correct in their interpretation of it. And therefore what- 
soever comes from the Scriptures must tend towards the will of Christ, and, 
it being the fountain of perfection, nothing can be laws ecclesiastical but 
what is from, and in, and for, and by that fountain. 

Hence a people that abstains from writing their laws, and, instead thereof, 
resort to custom and usage, does not and cannot do amiss ; but when prece- 
dent alone is their warrant and their guide they shall not always find out 
what is the true rule ; indeed there is nothing that is a law to our con- 
sciences but what is bound upon us by Christ and confirmed in the Holy 
Scripture ; but everything else that is analogous thereto is lawful and per- 
mitted that is not by the Scriptures restrained, and until the fetters are put 
upon us we are at liberty to become a law unto ourselves, and for such a 
law there need be no express warrant from Scripture, so it be in harmony 
therewith, and not contrary thereto. Such a law, before it can be deemed 
good, must be certain to a certain intent, just in precept and convenient in 
execution. It is of so much importance to a law that without this it cannot 
be just. For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, luho shall prepare him- 
self to the battle f 

That ecclesiastical precedents, alone as such, have no place in Baptist 
church jurisprudence, has been shown; much less has tradition. Now that 
body of doctrine and discipline, or any article thereof, supposed to have been 
put forth by Christ or his apostles, and not committed to writing, is tradi- 
tion. It is the oral delivery of opinions, rites and ceremonies from ancestors 
to posterity — the transmission of any opinion or practice from forefathers to 
descendants — by oral communications, without written memorials, exclusive 
of rational processes. 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 205 

Here is a sample of the many hundreds that have crept into the religion 
of these degenerate days, as practiced by a large body of people who pro- 
fess Christianity : " There is a tradition as old as Christianity itself, that 
after the crucifixion the Saviour's mother lived in the neighborhood of 
Calvary ; that, in her sorrow, she often visited the scene of her son's suffer- 
ings, and that she frequently walked up the rugged mountain path he had 
trod carrying his cross, and that at every spot where he paused she knelt 
and prayed. It is told that in this she was imitated by her friends. After 
she died the disciples gathered around her grave, and St. Thomas desired to 
open it. They removed the earth and found only the winding sheet. There 
were mysterious signs about the grave that forced them to believe that God 
had preserved her body incorruptible by carrying it to heaven. This has 
never been declared an article of faith in the Catholic church, but from the 
very earliest days of Christianity it has been held to be a pious belief." 

This is called the " Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into 
Heaven." Many of these traditions relate to church polity, as well as to 
faith and doctrine, and it is certain that nothing has been more destructive 
to true Christianity and church polity than the evil effects of tradition. 

That the Scriptures do contain the whole will and law of Christ, and that 
the holy record is a perfect and only digest of it, has ever been held by Bap- 
tists in all ages of the world ; that the Scriptures are not a perfect rule of 
faith and practice, but that tradition is to be added to make it a full repos- 
itory of the divine will, is affirmed by the church of Rome, and all others 
who imitate them, by supplementing the law of Christ with written codes of 
procedure. This is the more evident because the church of Christ, iu all the 
first and best ages, when tradition could have been resorted to with more 
certainty, and assent to it might have been more reasonable, they gave no 
credence to tradition, but accepted the Scriptures as their only rule of faith 
and practice. It is further evident that the further we recede from the 
apostolic times, the more stress these people place upon tradition and the 
higher becomes the heap of man-made laws and devices of man's invention. 

No device or invention of man is to be admitted into either faith or prac- 
tice if they be without authority and testimonies from Scripture. All that 
which is worked into church polity, that has not its basis in the Scriptures, 
is but human tradition. As for the written word of Scripture, there is abso- 
lutely no power at all given to any one, either to do any of those things 
which are forbidden, or to omit any of those things which are commanded. 
As for those indifferent things which are passed over in silence, the apostle 
Paul has laid down for us a rule, saying. All things are lawful for me, hut 
all things are not expedient. That is to say, nothing is a part of the in- 
flexible law of Christ in faith or practice, but what is written in the Scrip- 
tures. If it is not written there it is left to our liberty, and we are to use it 
as all indifferent things are to be used — that is, with liberty and charity. If 
in these indifferent rules there be any tradition it matters not ; they are no 
part of our religion, but may be received like the laws of man, or customs 
of which an account has already been given, but, like the customary law, 
they must be rooted and grounded in the Scriptures. 



206 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

In the first ages of the church when the apostles were yet alive, when they 
disputed with the heretic Jews they often urged against them the universal 
tradition of the churches. Because they denied both the divinity of Christ 
and the authenticity of the Scriptures. Until the whole of the Scriptures 
were written and compiled and their authenticity established and admitted, 
to such men as these it was of great use to urge the traditions then extant 
and yet fresh in the minds of the people, because all these things were orally 
preached in all of the apostolical churches, and by the universal preaching 
of these doctrines they could very easily refute the heresies urged against 
them. The Jews contended that, besides their written law contained in the 
law of Moses, God delivered an oral law which was handed down from 
generation to generation. The various decisions of the Jewish doctors and 
priests on points which the law had either left doubtful or passed over in 
silence were the true sources of their traditions. It was then that Paul said : 
Stand fast and hold the traditions which ye have been taught whether by word 
or our epistles. They had been reared under a system where much stress had 
been placed upon the traditions of the fathers, and therefore the apostles 
had reason to urge tradition yet fresh in their minds, and to wrest it from 
their hands, who were inclined to use it to a wrong purpose. But in all this 
there was no objection, for all this tradition was nothing else but the doc- 
trine and discipline of the Scriptures which were being preached, written 
and canonized into the veritable law of the churches, so that afterwards 
there would be no need to urge tradition, or anything else but the inspired 
law itself. They did not pretend to prove by tradition what they could not 
prove by Scripture, but the same things were preached which were written, 
and they had no better rules of faith and practice, and certainly tradition 
was of no use after the canon of the Scriptures was closed, established and 
recognized. 

The only way we have of knowing satisfactorily whether a tradition is of 
divine authority is by its having a place in those writings which are gener- 
ally acknowledged to be the genuine productions of inspired men. All 
traditions which have not such authority are without value, and tend really 
to distract and mislead the mind. Paul so advises his brethren when he 
says : That ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, 
and not after the tradition which he received of us. Whatever laws have 
been delivered to us whether by Christ or his apostles, or in any other way, 
there is no way of disputing it, so it be a tradition of God, whether written 
or unwritten, it matters not. But if it cannot be made so to appear, it is 
not obliging upon the churches. Unless the light be clear, it cannot be a 
lamp unto our feet. It is well enough as long as a truth is a tradition of 
God, but if it becomes to be a Catholic tradition, a Baptist tradition, your 
tradition or mine, there is nothing in them of divinity, nothing of that 
authority which has a binding efficacy that is safe to follow. 

This view of the efficacy of Scripture in church polity excludes the office 
work of human tradition to which is attributed so much power by Catholics 
in their economy which goes to make up the fiiith and practice of that peo- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 207 

pie. Every plant which my heavenly Father haih not planted shall be rooted 
up. Now plants are those things which do not spring up of themselves, but 
by the planting. Some arise from seed sown in the ground, some from slips, 
some are grafted, and some are inoculated. If care be given to select the right 
kind of seed, and if grafts are taken from the best of trees which are indi- 
genous to the soil, they grow and bring forth fruit pleasing to the taste ; but 
if tliey grow wild, and of their own accord, they are but noxious, and the 
fruit is fit for nothing and the plant upon which it grows is to be rooted up 
and cast into the fire. If the rule be a Scripture one, or if it be grounded, 
nurtured therein, and watered by the dews of the divine law, there can 
be no tradition in it. On the contrary, if it be only tradition and springs 
up independently of Scripture as a wild plant in uncultivated soil it can 
have no divine authority and is to be plucked up and cast into the fire. 

With a certain school of theologians if the Scriptures do not prove some 
things, tradition must. Error needs the support of tradition, while truth is 
abundantly provided for in Scripture. It is in vain to contend that apos- 
tolical traditions can have any place in church government when it cannot 
be made to appear that there are any such things as apostolical traditions, of 
either doctrine, or practice, not contained in the Scripture. That being a 
competent record there was no necessity for tradition, and to attempt to 
prove by Scripture that there are any traditions, not written in Scripture, is 
a folly. So that all the pretensions taken from Scripture in behalf of tra- 
dition are to no purpose, unless it were said in the Scripture by Christ, or 
some of the apostles, that there are some things which we now preach to you 
that should never be written, which we hereby command you to keep ; but 
when we hear even Paul mentioning traditions in some of his writings and 
recommending them in others, it is no argument for us to inquire after them 
or to rely upon them, unless that which was delivered by the apostles in their 
sermons was never to be reduced to writing, and that we know of a certainty 
that what we are to receive as tradition is that which was so preached by the 
apostles. There is no traditional exposition of the Scriptures, purely as such, 
which has come down from the apostles and has been believed always and 
in all the churches, and by all men in those churches ; and of this we cannot be 
certain unless it be found in the Scriptures themselves. It has been shown 
of an ecclesiastical custom that it must be either Scriptural, or it must be 
analogous thereto, and assented to in all churches, at all times and in all 
places ; and unless traditions come up to the same standard they are to be 
rejected. 

Therefore those things are not to be inquired into which the Scripture has 
passed over in silence, for it has dispensed to us all things which conduce to 
our profit ; and whatever is from the fountain is a guide, and besides this there 
is nothing to be learned or practiced, and besides this it is not lawful for us 
to hear either man or angel ; and indeed it cannot be imagined how^ the 
Scriptures could be a law book unto the churches if it were so imperfect 
that it did not contain in itself a perfect rule of faith and practice. 

The question is not whether the Scripture is a rule for the churches, but 



208 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPEUDENCE ; 

whether it is a perfect rule without supplement or change ; not whether it is 
the word of God, but whether it be all the word of God, necessary to be re- 
sorted to in the government of Christ's churches. As Baptists we know 
absolutely nothing of the constitution and frame-work of the churches but 
by those by whom the gospel came to us which they then preached, and 
which afterwards through the medium of inspiration was set down in writ- 
ing and delivered to the churches. This law which the churches were after- 
wards to administer, the Scriptures did ordain. Doubtless Christ and his 
apostles did and said many things concerning church government which 
were not written, but those things considered essential were chosen to be 
written, and those things which might be termed traditional teachings were 
but explanatory of that which was afterwards written. 

They left this writing as their law, and if anything be added to it, or 
taken from it, the same ceases to be their law. These founders of the 
churches left this writing as their Testament, and this will of the testators, 
concerning the government of the churches, has only to be read to settle all 
contentions. It was consigned to writing and hence is not nuncupative, that 
when the testators were gone we might not doubt concerning their wills and 
have to resort to a man-made codicil handed down traditionally to know 
what the testators meant. 

It is a sign of weakness and error to see any sect going about with great 
pretensions to prove their doctrines or practices by tradition, and certainly 
those who believe in the sufficiency and inspiration of the Scriptures have 
no need of tradition. Certainly they cannot with any regard for the truth 
say that all the superstitions and ghostly stories and ritualistic nonsense they 
practice is found in the Scriptures. Where do the Scriptures teach the fast 
of lent, the keeping of Easter, sprinkling for baptism, baptism of infants, 
godfathers in baptism, baptism for the dead, the apostles' creed, as they use 
it, indulgences, transubstantiation, universality of the church, the govern- 
ment of the churches by bishops, the divine rights of the pope and a thou- 
sand other evil practices that have no authority of Scripture ? They are 
neither agreeable to nor found in Scripture. 

Therefore it is confidently concluded that in either faith or practice noth- 
ing is to be received in church government which men upon their own fancy 
and invention think good in their own eyes ; or, as Christ expresses it, men 
shall not teach for doctrine the traditions of men. How then shall we know 
that any ecclesiastical principle comes down to us as a landmark and has 
resolved itself into an immutable law of the churches ? The most distinc- 
tive feature about it is, that like tradition, it must be purely unwritten, and 
if it can be made to appear that all Baptist churches and all Baptists did 
from the apostles' times down to the present time accept it as true and it has 
its source in the Scriptures, and we are able to derive it from the practice of 
the apostles and early churches, under their teaching, then it is to be received 
and continued, but not as a tradition, for a tradition is not based upon writ- 
ten memorials and derived from rational processes. Indeed a less series of 
successions might serve the purpose of establishing an immutable law of the 



OR, THE COMMOJT LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 209 

churches. If it can be made sure that the ages next to the apostles did uni- 
versally receive and practice the law as from the apostles, then we ought not 
to reject it. Therefore that which all Baptist churches practice which is 
found in the Scriptures is to be taken as having descended from the apostles, 
aad therefore to be taken and held as a landmark of the churches. 

It is not enough that one of these landmarks has been received for an 
hundred, or five hundred years by Baptist churches, commencing from a 
certain period upwards, unless it Avere also received by the apostolical ages 
and churches throughout the world, it is nothing ; and if it were based upon 
Scriptural memorials and received by all the apostolic churches and all the 
good and wise men of the early ages of the churches, whenever any one 
church failed to so receive it, it was to their own prejudice, and was not the 
fault of the law, for that was apostolical which was from the beginiung. 
Whatever came afterward could not change that which was before, and the 
interpretation of an apostolical truth, though for a thousand years together, 
cannot annul the obligation, or introduce anything to the contrary. So that 
in Baptist church jurisprudence when we take up a principle or custom and 
go backwards, although we find a break in it, it is nothing unless we go 
back as far as the apostles, inclusively ; but if we begin there, and make 
that clear, it matters not how little way it descends we must be able to point 
first at the fountain, and if the principle is derived from the Scriptures, and 
this head be visible, although it leaves the surface, and runs for a time under- 
ground, it is well enough, and it may be put down as an immutable land- 
mark and a law to be trusted. For a traditionary law might invade the 
whole denomination which was not practiced by the early churches, as if it 
might seem to have invaded them, and yet not having been the practice of 
those churches, it is certain that this universality could never be a Avarranty 
for a law of the churches. Hence there is great variety in the proof of tra- 
dition, so that whatever is proved to be tradition is not equally and alike 
credible ; for nothing but universal tradition (if there could be such a thing) 
is of itself credible. Now that a tradition be universal, or which is all the 
same, that it be a credible testimony, requires that it should be derived from, 
and believed by, all the churches apostolical, and must be either contained 
in the letter or spirit of the gospel. Unless principles descend to us with 
equal certainty with the Scriptures themselves, it would be very unsafe to re- 
quire of us an absolute belief in them if they be not written, and since 
nothing can require our supreme assent but that which is truly universal 
and apostolical, it must have the consent of all those churches which the 
apostles planted, where they did preside. Where this is the case tradition 
will be of so little use that it cannot be proved in any thing, or in any way, 
but in the canon of Scripture itself, as it is now received ; and if it is there 
laid down there can be no tradition in it. Traditions that are to be received 
and entertained, because they are recorded in the Scriptures, which is, in- 
deed, so reasonable in itself that we need not thus class them among tradi- 
tions proper. They are themselves as authentic as Scripture is, if it comes 
from the same fountain ; for a principle is never the more the word of God 
14 



210 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

for being written if we can have any way of knowing it is from God, but it 
will not follow that whatever is pretended to be a tradition, is so, neither can 
any authority for unwritten tradition be derived from the Scriptures. And 
hence it is pride and a veritable heresy and a palpable apostasy from the 
faith to bring in what is not written in the Scriptures and palm it off as 
tradition. 

So that all traditions, except those very few, if any, that are absolutely 
universal, will lose all their obligation, and become no competent medium in 
which to confine men's practices, or limit their faith, or determine their per- 
suasions, either the difficulty of their being proved, or the incompetency of 
the testimony that transmits them, or the indifferency of the things trans- 
mitted. For all traditions rely but upon single persons and single testi- 
mony at first, and yet descending to others, comes to be attested by many, 
whose testimony, though cumulative, yet in value is but single, because in its 
incipiency it relies upon the first single relator, and so can have no greater 
authority, or certainty than they derive from single persons. Owing to 
these uncertainties all traditions, both ritualistic and doctrinal are disabled 
from determining our consciences in either believing or obeying. Baptists 
have received the disposition of their principles and system from no others, 
as from father to son traditionally, but from those by whom the gospel came 
to us, and we know nothing except what we see there recorded. Which 
gospel the apostles first preached, and afterwards by the mil of God de- 
livered in writing to us, to be the pillar and foundation of our faith, from 
all of which tradition is excluded. The Christian world as we now behold 
it is not at unity about matters of faith or practice. But in the apostolic 
times of the churches they were at unity in both faith and practice, which 
unity was a good assurance that what they so agreed in came from some 
common authoritative fountain, and that was no other than what they 
preached from, came immediately out of the Scriptures as the fountain of 
all truth. If heresies had crept in and they had erred, they could but have 
varied and divided up into sects ; but when errors and divisions did come 
in the course of time, these unhappy things came not by error so much as 
by the traducing and misleading influence of tradition. So that now, in 
place of going to these various so-called churches and receiving from them 
certain and clear truths, we must expect nothing but certain and clear con- 
tradictions. For how can a people who put their faith in tradition assure 
themselves that the belief or practice of their churches can be orthodox, and 
a proof that the doctrine so believed, or the customs so practiced, came from 
the apostles ? 

Now we must not confound Baptist church customary law with tradition, 
and say that since we find in the Scriptures no law for this or that prac- 
tice, it follows that tradition must have given this observation to custom, 
which shall gain in the course of time ecclesiastical authority by the inter- 
pretation of the reason of it, as custom and the usages of Baptist churches 
are based upon reason when they are not contrary to the Scriptures. It 
cannot be said that the observing of the minor usages in a Baptist church 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 211 

being somewhat of the nature of tradition, in that they are unwritten and 
confirmed by custom among those who believe in them, that, therefore, the 
one is no more defensible than the other. Now it has been heretofore shown 
in another chapter that customs in a Baptist church, as they do in civil law, 
pass for law where a Scripture rule is wanting, the continuance of the cus- 
tom being a good testimony of the goodness of the rule. In all matters of 
minor importance, in Baptist church government, it is not material whether 
the rule be grounded on the Scriptures or reason, seeing reason and utility 
are commendations enough for a law. For if Baptist church customary law 
and usage, being grounded on reason, and the word of God, all that must 
be perfect law which is so grounded, provided it be not repugnant to God's 
word and will, seeing he has expressly said, Why even of yourselves judge ye 
what is right f The generation of rules in a Baptist church, by custom and 
usage, is necessary, as no church has legislative powers nor has any tribu- 
nal outside of it a right to make a code of laws for its government. 

It might be said then, that taking the Scriptures alone as a basis to build 
upon. Baptist church jurisprudence has germinated itself, without the help 
of tradition, in such a manner that it necessarily becomes the author of 
itself. All things, therefore, in true church government which are as they 
ought to be, and are as Christ and the apostles intended, are conformed unto 
the Scriptures, and if there be yet any principle in the system not in strict 
conformity with the Scriptures, it is in some way ordered by the Holy 
record, and stands ready yet to be so conformed. To say the least of it, 
whenever the error is discovered, and an effort made to correct it, we will 
not be confused by the rubbish of human traditions and man-made law upon 
the subject, but we can look to the Scriptures, and leave customary law to 
do its office work in eliminating the error, in the same way it was engrafted 
upon the system. 

The teachings of the Scriptures are beautiful and easy to be understood, 
and without superfluity ; so are the customary laws and usages, if they are 
evolved according to the letter and spirit of the Scriptures. That which 
distinguishes them from all other systems of church law is that they are 
generated without the help of legislation. They are not of to-day's or yes- 
terday's birth. They are not agreed upon by one, or by a few, but by all ; 
and are such that being proposed, no man can reject as unreasonable or 
unsciiptural. There is nothing in them that being proposed any man hav- 
ing natural reason, and who has not had his mind already perverted by the 
study of a false, system, by a little labor can understand. That which is 
Scriptural, Baptists defend to the uttermost of their ability ; but that which 
is otherwise is left to wither in the root from which it sprung. Wherefore 
all traditional errors and abuses being studiously hunted out, which arise 
either from the ignorance or corruptions of men, and not from the Scriptures 
themselves, come to be improved upon by a constant comparison to the test, 
in which they are divinely grounded and from which they are drawn. 

Those who resort to legislation and to tradition to perfect their systems of 
church government, thereby admit that in many things, not laid down in 



212 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

the Scriptures, there arises a necessity for a rule for guidance. Likewise 
Baptists acknowledge this, and to supply this rule they recognize the obliga- 
tory force of no permanent ecclesiastical expositor of their principles and 
polity outside of, and above, each church, and must necessarily resort some- 
where for a rule for their guidance. While true church government begins 
as it ends, with the Scriptures, and while, at the present state of its perfec- 
tion, we rely entirely upon customary usage in all particulars wherein the 
Scriptures do not furnish a rule, yet it would be impossible to ascribe the 
descent of our system from immemorial usage ; for certainly there was a 
time in the early history of the churches when church law had not reached 
the footing of custom. At that early day, in all matters not fundamental, 
but indifferent, the Scriptures were cousidered as being not the only law 
whereby Christ made known his will to his disciples, touching all things 
that might be done. Christ's wisdom was boundless, and within it much 
was contained, and this wisdom imbued the disciples, who lived before the 
writing and compiling of much of the law, with the knowledge, doubtless, 
of many things concerning his churches, taught by Christ orally, not writ- 
ten in the law. 

It might be said that this unwritten law was in much hazard when it 
necessarily, at first, passed from man to man, and was in danger of vbecom- 
ing maimed and deformed. It certainly would have been miserable had 
there been wanting a clear outline of the fundamental principles of the 
churches, and we had no record of these principles but the memory of man, 
receiving the same by report from our predecessors. But the Lord in his 
wisdom has seen fit to deliver unto the world a clear and unmistakable 
record of the fundamental outlines of the churches, expedient to be known, 
as being the main original ground upon which the churches are built, to be 
patterns and examples to be followed in all ages to come. The application of 
all the elementary principles to these outlines did not take their constrain- 
ing force from either tradition or any written code, but from that power 
and authority of the apostles which gave them the strength of laws. That in 
the early churches a number of things were strictly observed of which the 
Scriptures made no mention one way or the other ; that those things once 
received and confirmed by use, long usage was a law sufficient to give them 
binding authority ; that, as in civil affairs, when there is no other law, custom 
itself stood for law. That inasmuch as all law is founded upon reason, to al- 
lege reason for it is the same as to cite Scripture when it is in harmony with 
and not contrary to the Scriptures. 

That w^hich has been received long since by Baptist churches, and is by 
custom now^ established, we keep as law, which we cannot transgress, yet 
what consent was ever thereto sought or required at the hands of Baptists of 
this day? But as every man's past actions are binding upon him as long 
as he lives, and likewise the deeds of a church as long as it continues, so the 
act of that same church done one or five hundred years ago stands as ours 
who belong to a church of Christ of the same faith and order, because 
Christ's churches are immortal ; we were then alive in our predecessors, and 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 213 

they in their successors do still live. The customary laws of the churches 
are thus handed down from generation to generation, and are available by 
universal and perpetual consent. There must be some necessary cause 
whenever the judgments of all men generally run one and the same way. 
The general and perpetual voice of all Baptists, with the same impulses, and 
having a oneness of will, faith and practice, is as the essence of truth itself 
For that which all Baptists have at all times learned and taught God him- 
self must have taught. It is but the verification of Paul's saying that, 
They are a law unto themselves. The rule of those who work by simple 
necessity is the determination of the wisdom of God, known to himself, but 
not always known to those that are directed to execute the rule. But God 
illumines the minds of every one who comes into his spiritual kindom, being 
enabled to know truth from falsehood, do thereby learn in many things what 
the will of God is concerning the polity of his churches. 

But in undertaking a task so difficult as that of developing a system of 
Baptist church government and law, I am aware that there arises to us pecu- 
liar and great dangers. In the mass of ideas, unwritten rules and technical 
expressions which we have derived from our predecessors, there must be 
mingled with the truths achieved a great deal that needs, from time to time, 
to be scrutinized lest there be in it error, which, by the traditional power 
of an ancient possession and usage, it might easily obtain authority over us. 
To avoid this danger we must desire that the entire mass of what has been 
handed down to us should be proved anew, questioned and investigated as 
to its origin and thoroughly tested before it is adopted. It is necessary, in 
a science like this, for us to make a periodical revision of the labors of our 
predecessors, in order to separate the ungenuine, and to appropriate the 
truth as an abiding possession to Baptists. And herein consists the most 
beautiful and enduring feature of Baptist church government. By this 
means each age through which we have passed has left its impress upon the 
system, and in like manner we of to-day can leave our individuality upon it 
so that the living connections may be acknowledged which bind the present 
to the past, each age leaving it more perfect and better understood. 

Those who first generated this peculiar kind of law must have known that 
it was necessary that aU Scripture rules should be fruitful, that they should 
be hunted and sought for diligently. And that customary law should be at 
first barren, and should not engender cases and principles. Wherefore, 
whatever was received contrary to the Scriptures, or the analogies of the 
same, or even where the meaning of the Scriptures is obscure, it was to be 
drawn into a consequence, and a custom founded upon it hastily. 

As in nature, whether animate or inanimate, no moment of complete still- 
ness is experienced, but a constant organic development ; so is the life of 
Baptist church law, and in every individual element in which this collec- 
tive life consists. So we find in human language a constant formation and 
development. Considering the operation of these principles upon a system 
of unwritten law, we must admit a strengthening power and development 
peculiar to itself through constant practice. What originally existed in the 



214 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

germ comes through application into more complete form and in time be- 
comes the common mind of all Baptists, all believing and acting one way 
and acting in unison, which according to the conscientiousness of each indi- 
vidual is not accidentally, but necessarily one and the same law to all 
churches, and the longer these usages live in the churches the deeper they 
take root in them, and are handed down from one generation to another, each 
one profiting by the experience of the last. 

Hence we see by comparison of this unique kind of law with other systems 
that it is radically difierent and antagonistic the one to the other. The one 
is conservative and preservative of the original formulas as we see them 
reflected in the Bible, and the other is by precedent, by tradition and by a 
false system of legislation destructive of the same. The post-apostolic sys- 
tems are founded upon the idea that the law of Christ is imperfect, and, needs 
amendment, and have fashioned their bodies after the Jewish Synagogues, 
and derive their strength from the mouldering elements of Kome and the 
dead past ; while the principles of Baptist church government, on the con- 
trary, are implanted in the progressive development of the human mind un- 
fettered by the entanglements of human canons and pontifical decrees and 
traditional ceremonies. These churches are not enthralled and impeded by 
the chains and manacles, the intricate web and woof of inherited priest-craft. 
Shake from these priest-ridden people these chains and manacles, and put 
in their hands the plain word of God, and they would soon return to the 
simplicity of Bible church polity, and learn the great lesson that the church 
of Christ was made for man, and not man for the church. We do not 
venerate and cherish our form of church government as a monument of 
ante-apostolic wisdom, the work of an era wiser than that of the Christian, 
or of that of our own, but its greatest merit is found in the fact that all true 
government ecclesiastical, both in form and substance, is at all times and 
under all circumstances, as Christ left it, in the control of the local members 
by and for whom the church was formed, and who refrained in the outset 
from adopting any of the dazzling forms of ceremonies, traditions and 
priestly splendor, and by the help of our kind heavenly Father, who has 
preserved us with a miraculous preservation, we will sufier none to be im- 
posed upon our descendants if fidelity to the present will avert it. Any 
system of church government that has thus preserved itself dominant and 
clear of the corrupting influences of tradition until it arrived at perfection 
must be considered a grand triumph of the true principles of religious free- 
dom and liberty of conscience. 

The common traditions, or such as are universally received, must flow 
from a source generally recognized as true ; that is to say, from the posses- 
sion of the confidence of men. It is by this confidence that traditions arise, 
and that they have been preserved by an entire people and during long 
periods of time. One of the principal ends of ecclesiastical jurisprudence 
must be to find the true sources of those traditions which have come to us 
enveloped in falsehood and lies through so many ages and implicitly be- 
lieved in by so many ignorant people. When some men in the world are 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 215 

ignorant of the true sources and causes of things, they are naturally in- 
clined to believe without proofs, and when they cannot render even approxi- 
mately an account by comparison of them, they attribute everything to 
tradition. The physic of the ignorant who have unbounded faith in tradi- 
tion is but common metaphysics, by which they attribute to this source the 
cause of the things they are ignorant of, without considering the means em- 
ployed by the divine will to make known the truth. These men, struck by 
the terrors of superstition, refer to tradition the cause of all that they imagine 
is true which they cannot prove. Tradition is born of ignorance, and a 
belief in it is more vigorous as reason is more weak and faith in God less 
strong. The true rule by which all obscurities in religious matters should 
be settled is, that when they cannot themselves form an idea of things be- 
cause they are remote and unknown, they settle them according to what is 
known and present. God will not hold us accountable for the unknown 
and unknowable, but in his wisdom has revealed to us everything necessary 
for our comfort and salvation. All intelligent men when they cannot know 
what is true, they attempt to know what is certain ; for not being able to 
satisfy their intelligence by knowledge they strive to make their will repose 
on conscience, and certainly they ought not to believe a falsehood when they 
are not obliged so to do. 

Therefore we conclude that traditions and precedents are not the proper 
repositories of the principles of church governments and especially of reli- 
gious truth, and are so fallible that Baptists have always ignored them. They 
have no place in church jurisprudence, for they are such things as are un- 
known to be so, but such as by arguments and presumptions we conclude 
them to be so. If the setting up of precedents and traditions as standards of 
either faith or practice were allowable, we might thereby abuse the whole 
church and obtrude what we please under the specious title of church 
authority. If the report of traditions in the beginning was so uncertain, 
that they could only aim at them by conjectures, and grope as in the dark, 
the uncertainty is much increased since, because the lapse of time is so great 
and the obscurity so perfect that they have no binding authority now. 
Finally, the only true apostolic traditions we have are such as are recorded 
in the acts of the apostles and writings of the evangelists delivered to us, as 
Luke says, by those who were eye witnesses, and ministers of the word. 

The absolute supremacy of the Scriptures requires that where church 
covenants, whether express or implied, form the fundamental law of the 
churches, that there should be some authority which can pronounce whether 
the church itself has, or has not, transgressed its power in some precedent, 
or whether a specific precedent conflicts with the Scriptures. If, as in other 
systems, a separate body of men were established — a high court — to pro- 
nounce upon the Scripturalness of a question, nothing would be gained. It 
would be as much the creature of the church as any other agency, and miglit 
err as much as the church itself Such a tribunal would be as much liable 
to transgress their powers as other mortals. But there is a tribunal under 
the law of the gospel which, in the regular course of the administration of 



216 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDENCE ; 

church government, must decide upon both faith and practice, according to 
the paramount law of the gospel, and they must do so not upon precedents 
in the abstract, but nevertheless upon practical cases as they from time to 
time arise. These tribunals are the Lord's judicatories — the churches of the 
living God. The fundamental idea which underlies them is, that their ethic 
relations are not between themselves and the masses of the denomination, as 
masses, whether in associations or conventions, or smaller sub-divisions, but 
between every individual member and his particular church that exacts 
obedience from him. Churches are organizations arranged conveniently to 
express the ecclesiastical will of the particular assembly — a local church — 
upon those subjects which are within their jurisdiction. 

According to this theory, Baptist church government is formed by all the 
members of the church entering the organization agreeing to a certain cov- 
enant by which each places himself in harmony with, and under the direc- 
tion of, the general will of the local church. When this covenant has been 
formed, the whole church becomes sovereign ; but it must be borne in mind that 
while the sovereignty is the exercise of the general will, regardless of precedent, 
it is inalienable and indivisible. It must also be remembered that this is not the 
manner in which a church ought to conduct itself, but the one to which all 
churches must necessarily conform. In the strict and scientific meaning of the 
term. Baptist church sovereignty, we see that it has a limited sense. There is 
often included in the term what ought to be excluded, and often excluded 
what ought to be included. It is often presented to persons little acquainted 
with close ecclesiastical reasoning, who may easily confound real with figu- 
rative sovereignty, and thus be led to suppose that the membership of a 
church truly possess the sovereign power, and therefore have the right to do 
that which is wrong in the sight of God and man, and offer no better excuse 
than that some other church had done the like before them. By the sov- 
ereign power is meant the making of laws, for wherever that power resides 
all others must conform to and be directed by it. Under tliis definition it 
is pertinent to inquire where does the law-making power in ecclesiastical 
government reside? In a church, in an association, a convention? or in a 
synod, a general assembly or conference, or in a council? Nay, verily. 
The legislation, or law-making power in true church government, resides in 
Christ and the apostles, the first and original great founders of the churches. 
When they finished their work and their writings the only body of men 
authorized to make laws for God and his churches passed away, and the 
power has been dormant ever since. To take any other view of it would be 
to contend that a church, or any other body of men, so far virtually pos- 
sesses the sovereign power that if all or a majority of the members agree to 
destroy the true laws of the churches and substitute others, they can carry 
their agreement into effect, as all unlawful governments are untimately a 
question of superior force. But because the church holds in its hands the 
issues of sovereignty, it is not to be considered absolutely sovereign, in the 
true sense of that word, any more than a municipal government is to be 
called sovereign in that it holds a charter under the supreme legislative power 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 217 

of a sovereign state. This sovereign power, sucli as churches now have, can 
only be exercised in administering the laws of Christ already made, or 
carrying them into execution, and in that sense alone are they sovereign. 
The power to make new laws, through the medium of precedents, is held in 
abeyance, the legislative sovereignty of the churches having been kept alive 
only during the lives of the apostles, while the power to execute the law is 
kept in constant activity, and lias been uninterrupted ever since. It is the 
belief and practice of post-apostolic sects that still a legislative sovereignty 
resides in synods, conferences and councils, or in those who have votes for 
the election of members of these bodies; but this opinion, if taken in its 
plain and direct sense, has no foundation in ecclesiastical jurisprudence ; and 
it is difficult to understand what benefit can be derived from such a perver- 
sion of the laws of the gospel and giving metaphorical or figurative mean- 
ings to expressions of such importance as that now in question. Within the 
true province of true church government — that of executing tlie law — there 
necessarily exists a supreme power from which the law of the gospel has 
provided no appeal, and which power, for that reason, may be termed sov- 
ereign, absolute, uncontrollable and arbitrary, and cannot be questioned by 
any other power, for there must be in every church a supreme authority, in 
which the rights of sovereignty reside as long as it keeps within the limits of 
the laws of the gospel, whence it is apparent that the supreme executive 
power of a Baptist church is vested in each local church, and to that extent 
alone it is sovereign. And thus a church cannot properly be said to pos- 
sess entire sovereign power, because all sovereign power is unlimited and 
uncontrolled. It must govern itself and acknowledge no legislative superior 
but God, and must not allow any legislative power to spring up in the 
church of God, to change, alter or subvert laws already made. 

But to conclude this chapter. Thus we see that in the Bible system of 
church polity there is no place for tradition. And we have further learned 
that in reality the lino between tradition and myth, ignorance and supersti- 
tion is not easy to draw, and yet the Catholic system of church government 
reposes largely upon foundations of this kind, being in its very nature very 
uncertain, insecure and is equally inventive and oblivious to authentic facts 
and to the truth. Tradition is as a blind man traveling in the dark. It 
is in this dense darkness that much that belongs to other monarchical systems 
of church polity is born. It is at best but the creative fancy of man, and 
the difficulty of separating fact from fiction, truth from error, in this con- 
fusion worse confounded, very often amounts to impossibility, its object 
being much more to instruct and dazzle the fancy of the ignorant than to 
instruct the understanding of tiie wise. As regards these vague myths 
Baptists regard them as baneful noxious weeds which it is their duty to dig 
up and destroy, while Catholics consider them as veritable articles of faith 
or at least as wrecks of former beliefs, over which the unknown has washed 
the debris of many centuries. That which is uncertain cannot be made 
certain by the fabrication of myths and superstitious mysteries. 



218 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 



CHAPTER VIIL 

BAPTIST CHURCH ETHICS IN GENERAL, AND SOME RULES IN PARTICULAR. 

WHILE Baptist Church Jurisprudence teaches us what has been and 
what are the laws governing the churches of Christ, Baptist Church 
Ethics is a body of rules of duty drawn from the science of the laws which 
govern our duties as church members. It is that science in church poUty 
which treats of what is good, noble, true, wise and right, because it is good, 
noble, true, wise and right, tested in the light of past experience. It treats 
of our knowledge of these attributes and the duties and obligations flowing 
from them, as they are applied to church government Common sense and 
common interest leads us to the observance of certain customs and usages, 
to observe certain ethical rules, without which intercourse and mutual under- 
standing would be impossible. These customs and usages in real ecclesias- 
tical hfe form a subject for reflecting minds to find out that which is stable 
in them, and why it is stable, as contradistinguished from what is variable, 
accidental and unessential. 

Ethics as applied to Baptist church government is a word derived from 
a Greek word which in the original means a custom or usage, that which is 
customary among Baptists living together in the same church, or in different 
churches of the same faith and order. It is that system of procedure which 
has been settled ; that on which they have long since agreed. While this is 
true, yet there is closely related to any system of ethics, ideas of decorum, 
that which is right, and that which ought to be done under particular cir- 
cumstances. Hence it belongs to the province of ecclesiastical ethics to 
furnish us with satisfactory answers to these questions; but a distinct under- 
standing of some points involved in these answers is so necessary for a 
correct solution of the true theory of Baptist church law and government, 
that it is essential that we pay some attention to them here. 

Now, it must be borne in mind that the apostolic form of church govern- 
ment came into being, and was set on foot without any specific written 
constitution, or at least none has been handed down to us from the apostles. 
The churches were called into being by the early disciples under the 
immediate supervision and direction of the apostles themselves. The first 
we see of them we notice them already in action and in operation. As to 
the exact manner how they were organized we are left to conjecture. We 
see them springing up one after another here and there as the Christian 
religion began to spread, all being of the same faith and order. We do not 
see any written code of procedure or ethical rules of decorum laid down for 
their government at the time of their organ izasion. As we see these 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 219 

churches progress and develop we see many ethical rules of practice laid 
down, when in time the Scriptures came to be written and compiled for the 
guidance of the membership, which serve as guides in this day and genera- 
tion. But these rules are few and scanty, the great body of them being 
ethical, rather than governmental. 

From the fact that these churches were thus established under the guid- 
ance of the apostles and so remained without change during their lives, we 
are to infer that Christ intended they should so remain without written laws 
and ethical rules of decorum. But ethical rules they must have and will 
have, for without them there can be no churches. They are just as necessary 
as are the rules for the proper government of the family, and these rules 
have sprung up with as much naturalness and are as binding as are the 
rules in a well-ordered household. It might be asked, How can a system of 
ethics become uniform without being first written and promulgated by some 
man or body of men having ecclesiastical authority so to do ? To one who 
considers not the Baptist denomination as indeed the chosen, aa well as the 
peculiar people of God, there is in these multitudinous churches, composing 
this great people, without organic unity, and often out of geographical touch 
with one another, and which, nevertheless, are in perfect unison with, and 
respond each to each all over the world, an aptitude for uniformity which 
strikes the heart and spirit of mankind with wonder and admiration. Not 
only is the unwritten ethical code of the Baptists more uniform all over the 
world than it has been frequently supposed, but the inter-church laws are 
particularly so. Still, though they were far less uniform, it would prove 
nothing against the divinity of our beautiful system. 

Among Baptists the true and only scientific method is to explain the 
past by the present, and the present by the past — what we see by what we 
do not see — what we do not see by what we do see. In true church govern- 
ment weare not to busy ourselves so much about the future. God will take 
care of that. He has led us safely thus far, and in his providence he will 
lead us on to that perfect development which awaits us if we will take care 
of the present. We can only comprehend why Baptists have clung so 
tenaciously to the apostolic form of church government and have been so 
stable in their ethical rules of decorum, when we see how hurtful and hate- 
ful variation is, and how it has cursed the Christian world ; how every true 
Baptist turns against it, and away from it, as from some deadly poison. 
We cannot comprehend why progress and undue development in church 
government has been so slow till we study the true genius of apostolic poHty, 
and see how the rigid laws of the gospel tie us down to the original order 
of things, and how hard these obstinate laws make undue and hasty progress 
possible. Those church systems which have sprung up from time to time, 
as the fancy of men might conjure, like mush-rooms, come to perfection too 
soon ; they take on the strength of giants while yet they are but babes ; they 
have taken upon themselves to learn lessons beyond the knowledge of men 
to know, and yet only too apt to unlearn and to undo those things hastily 
learned and done. A study of these post-apostolic systems confirms the 



220 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

principle, that Baptist cliurch government and the ethical rules made use of 
in it have, after eighteen hundred years, gained permanency and at the 
same time variability without losing its Scriptural legality. This is the 
only system of polity which has preserved the ancient landmarks of the 
apostolic churches and the only one that has a singular likelihood of being 
the prevalent and prevailing churches of the future. 

This system, though it be entirely unwritten, together with all the minor 
rules of procedure growing out of it, is marked by an intense Scriptural 
legality ; that legality is the very condition of its existence, the thews and 
sinews which tie it together, and that legality imposes a settled customary 
yoke of riveted steel upon all churches and all men living within them, 
and makes different churches of the same faith and order, of different 
ages, fac-similes of one another, as we see them reflected in the Scriptures. 
Development and progress are only possible where the force of legality has 
gone far enough to bind all Baptist churches together in a bond of indis- 
soluble spiritual union, but not far enough to destroy the autonomy of 
each, nor to kill out all variety and self-government and the right of each 
to make its own rules of decorum. Had it not been for the apostles 
priestly domination doubtless would have shown itself in those first churches. 
It is natural for despotism to grow in the first stages of society, just as it is 
the tendency of the spirit of democracy to grow in modern societies. Doubt- 
less the contests in those early churches cherished the principle of change, 
but the influence of the apostles insured stability and preserved that mould 
of thought which, under the blessing of God, was to last throughout all 
time to come. And now when we have no right to beget new laws, we, 
by covenant, adopt those already in existence, aiid what is remarkable, what 
is already made and adopted are better and wiser than any we can make 
Churches with these sort of maxims and this kind of ethics are not likely to 
depart from the original forms. Churches thus constituted, while the ethical 
rules may change under proper restrictions, yet the fundamental principles 
of their government remain forever the same. 

In the first place a Baptist's right and duty to think for himself and to 
rule himself in church affairs is inalienable. He cannot, even were he desir- 
ous of doing so, deprive himself of his individuality and moral responsi- 
bility. He cannot barter away these God-given gifts for any consideration, 
or on any account. Nor can others possibly deprive him of these blessings, 
though they, by his consent, may greatly limit him in the exercise of them ; 
he cannot alienate his free will and decide to be guided entirely by some one 
else and be a Christian after God's own heart. He must decide for himself, 
his conscience tells him go ; nor can others fetter' his will, which belongs to 
his rationality and individuality. He cannot bargain away his conscience 
and responsibility and submit to absolute obedience to man in whatever 
sphere this may be, because he cannot, if he chose, get rid of his ethic attri- 
butes, and, therefore, others cannot take his ethic responsibility upon them- 
selves No power on earth can obliterate this fundamental principle from 
Baptist church jurisprudence, which became the first starting point of the 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 221 

apostolic churches. It is the individual Baptist who wills, and he alone that 
wills acts, and he that acts is responsible. A Baptist is what he is, first and 
essentially, as an individual. Ecclesiastically speaking, he cannot act 
through another, his acts are his own, he cannot act through a representa- 
tive ; for, if he be forced to do anything against his will, he does not act, in 
the ecclesiastical sense of that term, but he suffers^ is in a passive state. One 
of the ordinances of an ancient lawmaker expresses it exactly : " Single is 
each man born ; single he dieth ; single he receiveth the reward of his good, 
and single the punishment of his evil deeds." 

It must have come under the notice of every student of the apostolic 
form of church government, a matter of historical observation that, before 
the writing and compiling of the Scriptures, the very earliest churches came 
into being, and a series of practical rules sprang into existence under the 
guidance of the apostles. As the mode in which this was done was not left 
to us in writing, the manner in which such ethical rules were formulated 
seems to be the following : A rule of action was made, and this spontane- 
ous practice was first followed, and if good and useful it was generally 
copied over and over again, the more so as a habit, and this habit ever after- 
Avards always rendered the imitation of an old and familiar practice easier 
than inventing a new and untried one. These ethical rules, when thus gen- 
erated and are tested and tried, must ever afterward correspond to the prac- 
tice of the churches. If it be not kept steady by corresponding practice, it 
is sure to be warped by all sorts of extraneous infiuences. It is the pecu- 
liarity of that class of ethical rules which are in this way the true germs of 
future Baptist church jurisprudence, that they are being constantly brought 
to mind and tested by application to the churches in actual governmental 
operation. The Scripturalness, integrity and validity of such forms are 
being constantly exposed to the most searching ecclesiastical tests. It is also 
worthy of remark that it is in small organic groups of men, such as we find 
in Baptist churches, who are the obstinate conservators of this kind of cus- 
tomary law, but the accuracy of the custom diminishes as the groups become 
larger and wider ; it is also true that such a system of ethics, which is the 
germ of ecclesiastical law, are from their very nature likely to be handed 
on in an unbroken integrity from one age to another. 

The notion of a written law as we understand it, a written rule imposed 
by human authority, capable of being enacted and altered by that same 
authority when it likes, and, in fact, so enacted and altered habitually, can- 
not be received by Baptists, who regard ecclesiastical law, in the true sense 
of that word, as an invincible prescription, as a divine revelation. They do 
not profess to enjoin by inherent authority what church law in the future 
shall be, but to state and mark what the laws of the gospel already are ; 
they are found to be declarations of immemorial custom, not precepts of new 
duties, as boundaries to lands are perambulated, and landmarks searched out 
once a year, and thereby every rule tending towards errors and heresies made 
patent and cleared of new obstructions. They resist all authority which does 
not manifest itself in the local church. They look upon such authority not 



222 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

as their own action, but as alien action ; as an imposed tyranny from with- 
out, not as the consummated result of their own original wishes. They 
conceive of their pastors even as the chosen agents of the churches, who, 
when they perform the most solemn and sacred functions of their office 
they do so in virtue of the mandate of the sovereign church. The apostolic, 
form of church government does not require a bishop to rule over the 
churches ; any system allowing such things cannot be Scriptural, healthy, 
free and vigorous like that system we see reflected in the Bible. Our church 
history reveals the attitude of Baptists upon this question all along the line 
of the ages ; our church freedom is the result of centuries of resistance to 
such domination, more or less legal, more or less illegal, more or less auda- 
cious, and more or less timid, purchased often at the price of the precious 
blood of our ancestors. 

To evolve, acknowledge and obey ethic rules of church government, is 
one of the highest prerogatives, as well as the duties of church members. 
It is indeed alarming to see how indifferent some Baptists are in the obser- 
vance of the laws of the churches, especially in the midst of those unhappy 
troubles which are apt to arise in every church. Obedience to law means 
our willingness to conform to rules of ethics in which principles, as applied 
to church government, are pronounced. The member himself, as well as 
the church at large, stands in need of fixed la-ws and principles ; without 
them there would be moral disorder. There is a vague idea prevalent in 
some of our churches that there are no fixed rules that need to be observed. 
Everything seems to be done by the rule of " aye " and " no." The church 
that does not adopt general rules of decorum and does not religiously obey 
them, is exposed to all the dangers of being carried away by passion and 
impulse. Churches do not only stand in need of laws in order to avoid the 
discords incident to a want of them, but also because without laws the 
churches would lose their moral characters, the membership would forfeit 
their individuality as social beings, and social advancement and spirituality 
would be impossible. Baptists are wholly Christians only in orderly and 
well-ordered churches, and churches are only gospel churches by the laws of 
the gospel, and the laws of the gospel are virtually laws when obeyed — 
therefore both the destiny of the churches and that of the membership 
requires obedience to the laws. Obedience to rules of ethics then is 
necessary, for without their being followed they are no longer laws in 
essence, because no longer rules of action. 

There is an absolute duty devolving upon every Baptist to make himself 
acquainted with the workings of the government of his church, for whatever 
the church is, it did not spring forth yesterday, aswe will see in the progress. 
of this treatise. The churches have become what they are by a long chain 
of processes, and the religious institutions which surround the membership, 
which form the essence of this government, are not known from their casual 
appearance as it may strike us at first glance, but from their operation, 
which is but their history ; nor can we possibly know from whence they 
oame, nor whither they tend, and whether they work good or evil, without 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 223 

knowing the causes from which they spring, and the mode in which they 
have operated. This will increase our love, if possible, for our churches and 
make us proud of our heritage. Besides no genuine and firm love of our 
Baptist institutions is possible without its receiving strength from a know- 
ledge of the nature of true ecclesiastical polity and the history of our 
churches. If we do not know this we are deprived of a wholesome 
experience. To be a useful intelligent member of a Baptist church one must 
have this experience, and to have it we must study it. It has a long chain 
of history and is not composed of these few millions of Baptists, and the 
several thousands of churches that happen to exist at this present moment, 
but the Baptists of all ages with all the ethical relations subsisting between, 
them, their institutions, their usages and customs, their growth and history. 
In a local church alone can a Baptist study its laws, its government, and his 
obligations to it, and his rights under it, which he really enjoys, and ought 
carefully to preserve, and transmit inviolate to those who come after him ; 
through it alone he can learn how to appreciate what is good in it, and dis- 
cover what requires amending, and how it ought to be amended. 

We see, therefore, the great importance of studying deeply these rudi- 
mentary principles of church polity and imprinting on our minds sound 
ethical rules. It is one of the greatest blessings to live in a church under 
wisa usages and customs administered by an upright government, and obeyed 
and carried out by a good and pious membership. It greatly contributes to 
our spiritual growth in grace if we live in a church, the members of which 
we love and respect and gladly acknowledge as our brethren. On the 
contrary, we feel ourselves unduly humbled and dispirited, we feel our views 
contracted, our moral vigor relaxed, it wears off the edge of moral sensitive- 
ness, when we see ourselves surrounded by a membership with loose ideas of 
both morals and ecclesiastical principles ; when we hear of mutterings of 
discontentment, of factions, schisms and divisions, a membership without any 
opinion of their own, and without any trustworthiness, brotherly love, mutual 
forbearance and dependence upon one another. Orthodoxy gradually 
vanishes, heresies spring up, ministers begin to throw off their allegiance to 
Christ and to the denomination. The heresies of to-day become the religion 
of to-morrow. Heoce the rapid disintegration, disruption and downfall of 
churches, when looseness in these principles begin to undermine the churches. 
The church must, therefore, through its government maintain and protect 
itself, evil designs against its existence from within and attacks upon its in- 
dependence from without should be guarded against, and likewise it should 
protect each member in the full enjoyment of all his rights and prerogatives 

In other systems of church government a thorough acquaintance with 
these principles, though useful to some members of the church, are not so to 
every one. Ecclesiastical ethics may form a very proper study for a pope, 
a cardinal, a bishop, a presiding or a ruling elder, who makes a profession of 
ruling the churches, but in our system every church member is a ruler as 
they are likewise one of the ruled. These things ought to be well under- 
stood by every member. It is, in particular, necessary to instruct our young 



224 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

members in them. It is every Baptist's business to known his duty, and his 
duties as a church member are among the most sacred and important, 
especially so in our Baptist churches where they are called upon to take part 
in the government of the churches, and have liberty of conscience and 
liberty of a free government. The success of the whole church depends upon 
the intelligence of the whole membership ; and there is no subject connected 
with the church, how to rule the church and how to rule themselves, which 
does not virtually affect the interest of every one. Baptist church rules and 
institutions are nothing more than dead forms, unless they are put in opera- 
tion, and this cannot be done without a knowledge as to how it should be 
done. As Baptist church government is a vital living principle, it must live 
in the heart of every Baptist, not only as an ardent desire, or indefinite no- 
tion, but we must have a knowledge of our church obligations, and a pro- 
found reverence for ecclesiastical morality. Our Baptist church institutions 
cannot be preserved, though the laws we have were inspired, if they find not 
a support in every church member, and this they cannot have if they do not 
understand them, and are not willing to follow their teachings because they 
are Scriptural and useful. 

No one can over-estimate a good system of moral ethics for use in the 
churches of Christ. Good laws are the best Baptist legacy which one gene- 
ration can leave for another ; the greatest blessing of the Baptists of to-day 
is a long continued series of wise ethical rules for the government of the 
churches. We have but to look at such a system as enacts good and whole- 
some rules in every other department of social life to understand fully its 
importance. Without ecclesiastical morality, that is, good customs and 
orthodox usages, there can be no sound churches ; nor can there be an eccle- 
siastical without a private morality ; but private morality among the mem- 
bership of our churches is best preserved where it has grown into good cus- 
toms and usages. " Custom," says Lord Bacon, "is the chief magistrate of 
man's life ; men should, therefore, endeavor by all means to obtain good 
customs." If this be true, ecclesiastical morality in all its manifestations is 
of elementary importance for the well-being of the churches. For in the 
multifarious affairs of our churches, there are certain general rules, which 
are of peculiar importance because they either prompt more frequently to 
church acts, or come more often than others into play in ecclesiastical life. 
Of these I beg leave to say a few words, as they embrace some of the most 
important situations in which church members are called conscientiously to 
act, although in many instances not guided by any Scriptural rule. A wise 
code of ethical rules must not only be made by an orthodox and pious 
membership, but they must be wise and Scriptural laws; and while an 
orthodox tone of the churches is of primary importance in free churches, 
prudence and sound counsel in the commentator is not less so. For wise 
rules must be made with reference to the membership themselves, the period 
they live in, and the environments that surround them. 

The great desideratum in Baptist church jurisprudence is a complete 
compendium of inter-church law, suitable to be adopted by all the Baptist 



OS, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 225 

churches of the land, and to be enforced by their combined consent. It is 
to be hoped that Baptists will in time come to a oneness of will and practice 
in this respect as they have in regard to their articles of faith. The prac- 
ticability of such a scheme has never been exemplified for want of such a 
code. The complete development of a system of inter-church law can only 
take place from the influence of intercourse and intercommunion, which 
unites all Baptist churches by the strongest tie — the desire of supplying 
mutual wants and helps ; so that there shall be a uniform system in our mis- 
sionary and other operations, as that there shall not be one rule at one place, 
another at another ; one now, another hereafter ; but one and the same law 
shall obtain at all places and all times. The study of Baptist church inter- 
dependency will aid in the most important degree the development of such 
a system. Certainly, if there were ever an age in which it was important 
for our Baptist ministers, and others learned in our polity, to be acquainted 
with these underlying principles, it is the age in which we live. If we wish 
our churches to be developed to the highest point of efficiency, we must sys- 
tematize them, and by means of laws in conformity with God's word and 
sound sense, place them in a condition wherein they can accomplish the spread 
of the gospel. To do this will require the best thought of our greatest men. 
These considerations are the more important from the fact that Baptists 
have no ecclesiastical legislature in their system empowered to make laws 
for the government of the churches, and is the more interesting because their 
jurisprudence has grown up entirely independent of that from which others 
derive theirs. As Baptists, therefore, and especially as lovers of religious 
liberty we are bound to acquaint ourselves thoroughly with our ethic rela- 
tions in ecclesiastical government. We will do this the more readily when 
we contemplate to what denomination we belong and in what enlightened 
period we live. Church governments which are free and independent have 
this great advantage as regards the moral influence of their ethic usages and 
customs in general ; that the membership consider that these rules are made 
by themselves, and that they are not only, therefore, the more strictly bound 
to obey them and to assent to all their provisions, but that it may reasonably 
be inferred they are expressly adapted to their particular exigencies. If 
there were Scriptural authority for it, I would be a friend to the codification 
of Baptist Church jurisprudence, so as to fix in a text the law as it is, not 
as it ought to be, as far as it has gone, and leave new principles to furnish 
new doctrines as they arise, and then reduce these again at distant intervals 
into the text of the law. The trouble with all post-apostolic systems is they 
commence with a legislative body in the incipiency of the government of tho 
churches, and commence to warp and twist the law to suit the preconceived 
notions of the legislative body before the law had time to conform itself to 
Bible principles. It is what the law oiir/ht to be and not really what it is. 
Since multiplicity of written rules have great inconvenience and serve only 
to obscure and perplex, all manner of authoritative comments and exposi- 
tions, on any part of these fundamental principles of church government, 
are absolutely prohibited by Baptists. 
15 



226 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

If, nevertheless, churches are to have relations of ever-increasing intimacy 
with each other, there must be some uniform code of ethics, although it be 
unwritten, by which the rights and duties of churches are defined and cir • 
cumscribed. Beneficial and essential as is such a code of procedure in times 
of discord and confusion, it is equally so in times of peace. The construc- 
tion of such a code, although it be by a private individual without 
ecclesiastical authority to formulate it, must proceed upon some settled and 
generally recognized principles of ethical classification and conception. The 
materials for these principles must, and can only, be drawn from a compara- 
tive study of the systems of ecclesiastical law actually prevalent in the 
diflferent Baptist churches at the time it is written. It is needless to say 
that such a written code could not be made and promulgated by any Baptist 
church or other body of men having authority so to do ; but any church 
might adopt and use such a system of ethics in so far as it might be intrinsi- 
cally Scriptural and fit for use. But as any system of church or inter- 
church law progresses to still finer developments than any authoritatively 
written code, and trenches on regions of mutual co-operation wholly un- 
known to any other system of church ethics, some method must be discovered 
of expressing a common assent based upon the common needs of the 
churches. Such a method will evidently be a comparative one, and its 
elaboration presupposes a complete development and understanding of the 
rudimental principles of Baptist church government. In this peculiar 
system of Baptist church ethics, due as it is to the intercourse of church with 
church, and of individual with individual, there has been increasingly felt 
the same pressing need to discover principles of utility and justice to which 
the membership of all Baptist churches and the tribunals of all churches of 
the same faith and order will pay deference, for it is certain that these 
principles are capable of being digested into ethical rules and maxims. 

As ecclesiastical ethics thus gather what common sense has established 
among the churches by applying them to particular situations or important 
characteristics of the membership of each church, we obtain special branches 
or systems of ethics as they relate to every phase of church life. This being 
the case, the various rights and duties of church members in their various 
relations as individuals may consistently and justly be established with as 
much certainty as that of any other science. Ethics having ascertained and 
established a system of rules for the use of the churches, it is the province of 
church government to ascertain the best means of securing and enforcing 
these rules, both according to the result of experience, and the demands of 
existing circumstances. I would call this branch of ethics ecclesiastical 
government, proper. For, while every member upon entering a church 
acquires rights he assumes duties at the same time, and the church must 
offer to protect these rights and see that those duties are performed, or it 
would cease to be a church, so far as he is concerned who is denied to have 
a right to derive any advantage from it. Ethics treat, among other things, 
of the duties of church members, and secondarily of his rights derivable 
from his duties to his church and to his brethren. The confusion of Scrip- 



OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 227 

tural law with ethical duties in church government has produced evil, and 
not unfrequently disastrous consequences. Without establishing these firm 
and absolute principles, all is confusion and insecurity. On the other hand, 
we are often so far misled by the rigid rules of the law of the gospel, as to 
judge every ecclesiastical question by theory alone, disavowing experience, 
expedience, and a due regard to the govermental elements given wherewith 
to work. 

The freer church government is, the greater is the force and authority of 
the laws of the gospel, as such, and is not to be attributed to the personal 
dictation of any other power whatever ; and less circumscribed at the same 
time is the individual action of the membership of the churches. This is 
not so much the necessary consequences of religious liberty, as its essential 
attributes. The more freedom of action and belief there is in any system of 
church polity, the greater necessity there is for general intelligence among 
the membership, and of reverence for the law. All consolidated systems of 
government may far more easily dispense with moral compliance with the 
law; they may coerce and dominate and thus maintain their authority. 
Baptists stand in need of a willing compliance with all wholesome rules of 
ethics, because it is the law of the church ; or else discord and divisions in 
the church must follow. Our system shows in this, as in so many other 
respects, its superiority over all others. Yet above all things Baptists 
must be intelligent and must know what the law is. Let other people bestow 
all their energy and means upon the education of the niinistry, which is well 
enough, but let Baptists have not only an educated ministry but an educated 
membership, because they, along with the ministry, are the rulers of our 
churches. Others would keep their membership in ignorance, that they 
may be the more readily hoodwinked. With them ecclesiastical power and 
priestly splendor is the most striking attribute of the church, and that part 
of the government which wields it most signally, is mistaken for the govern- 
ment of the church itself, a mistake which misleads farther, so that he, or 
they, who have usurped supreme ecclesiastical power came naturally to be 
considered the church itself 

In taking a view of this important subject we must suppose that organ- 
ized Baptist churches are existing side by side under separate and indepen- 
dent governments, exercising supreme control over their own assemblies, that, 
therefore, there is no central organ of legislation, by whose action any rule 
of inter church conduct which thoughtful persons may regard as desirable 
could be at once laid down as binding on all the churches morally ; and no 
central executive power able to force any recalcitrant church to obedience. 
We readily see that any code of ethics intended to govern such a system 
must be such as an independent body of churches can be induced to volun- 
tarily obey ; partly by their own voluntary sentiments of justice and equity, 
but chiefly by their love of the brotherhood and the fear of the disapproba- 
tion of sister churches, and the more or less danger of consequent hostile 
criticism on the part of those whose duty it is to obey such rules. Hence 
we see that a great part of the rules enforced by the churches in our polity 



228 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

have not liad their origin in express ecclesiastical legislation ; they have been 
gradually brought to the degree of precision and elaborateness which they 
have now attained by a series of ecclesiastical decisions which have ostensi- 
bly declared and applied these rules and principles as they have been 
handed down from time immemorial. And it is contended that this eccle- 
siastical quasi church legislation is, in a highly cultured church, the very best 
machinery for introducing such improvements as may be required in the 
development of a true system of church government. 

In studying this system of ecclesiastical polity we find that its growth is 
through the actual controversies that arise between church and church, and 
between member and member, their moral claims and moral situations, and 
which call for formal decisions at the hands of churches, or the findings of 
legally constituted councils, that ethical rules first came into being. I mean 
of course such as the Bible does not prescribe. It is because churches and 
individual members thereof are doubtful about what is, and what ought to 
be, that rules come in to determine what shall be. Thus moral claims and 
contentions become converted into ecclesiastical rights and obligations, and 
moral ties into ethical duties. At first the principle is vacillating, uncertain 
and ofttimes retrograding ; but the customary and habitual use of the rule thus 
evolved, and the hardening and determining process is ever at work, until it 
is recognized by all the churches. The same beautiful process takes place 
though more slow^ly and cautiously, with true apostolic church government. 
Scriptural limits and bounds being gradually imposed on the arbitrary dis- 
position of the government, and the notion of a constitution — a divine 
charter — superior to the actual governing authority gradually making its 
way. Notwithstanding this theory of Baptist church ethics it will be 
observed that these principles can only take under their shadow a very 
small portion of the spiritual and inherent life and force to each rule, 
though to the whole church it gives so much ethics, indeed, marks out the 
limits of each feature of church government, and provides general remedies 
for the grosser violations of the integrity of the church. But it can go, and 
does go a very little way towards making good church members. Ethics 
can create and define a beautiful system of moral rules; but it is well 
known how little they can do directly to guide men into a truly spiritual 
life, how to make them love one another, how to make them charitable to 
one another, and how to love God with all their hearts. These things must 
come down from above and dwell inherently within them. 

It is one of the most indelible feelings in the breasts of Baptists that they 
cling to, venerate and cherish the apostolic form of church polity. Their 
gratitude must consist in acting out farther and farther what the apostles 
first began, not in a desire to change or innovate, but to consider that which 
they were able to obtain under the instruction of Christ as the best and 
wisest. Hence, Baptists from the standpoint of government have ever 
looked backward, not forward. The excellence of true church polity 
depends upon its fitness and its conformity to apostolic forms, that is upon 
the sound principle judiciously applied to the existing state of things, as we 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 229 

see them reflected in the New Testament. This is not the case, however, 
with the mutable rules of ethics, laws and customs arising under this gov- 
ernment. These things change in the course of time, as the churches 
become more and more perfectly developed ; real standing still is, therefore, 
impossible, and if we do not move onward, if we force the same usages and 
customs upon changed circumstances, we would ruin the churches, and 
stop that progress without which they could never reach the acme of their 
perfection. In all things appertaining to the form of government of the 
churches stability is of itself most desirable ; it preserves that which Christ 
authorized and the apostles set up, and gives a divine tone to the churches, 
but in their mere ethical development to preserve that which is weak, im- 
perfect or bad, is either foolish or immoral. Every new custom or usage is 
not an innovation, nor is every innovation an error, nor should we declare 
war against everything that exists or has existed. 

A code of ethical rules arising out of a true system of church govern- 
ment is like a living common language, a common literature. It has the 
principle of its own organic vitality, and of formative as well as assimila- 
tive expansion within itself. It consists in the customs and usages of Bap- 
tists, the decisions which have been made accordingly in the course of the 
administration of the affairs of the denomination, the principles which the 
Scriptures and reason demand, and practice applies to every varying cir- 
cumstance, and the administration of church affairs which has developed 
itself gradually and steadily. It requires, therefore, self-church interpreta- 
tion, or interpretation by each church itself, and requires the non-interfer- 
ence of any dictating power beyond the limits of the church itself Eccle- 
siastical power cannot be sovereign if it be limited, for, in that event, that 
which imposes the limitation would be the sovereign. Those who hold to 
the idea of a limited sovereignty do not assert a legal limitation, but a 
limitation by the law of the gospel and the customary laws between the 
churches. But who is to interpret, in the last instance, these principles, 
which are termed the laws of God as applied to church government, when 
they are invoked by any one in justification of disobedience to the powers 
which the church authorizes ? Is it not evident that this must be the church 
itself? It may be that an individual, eminent as a theologian, might inter- 
pret these principles more truly than does the church, but it is not at all 
probable, and not at all admissible in principle or practice. Of course the 
church may abuse its unlimited power as the sole interpreter of the laws of 
God, but it is never to be presumed. It is the only ecclesiastical organ to 
which Christ committed this power, and the one least likely to do wrong, 
and, therefore, we must hold to the principle that the church will knov/- 
ingly do no wrong. If in its weakness it should err, there is always hope in 
the future that it will get right. 

A Methodist general conference, a Presbyterian general assembly, and all 
such ecclesiastical bodies are direct governments ; that is, the organization 
of these legislative bodies, and the organization of the general government 
of those churches are identical. No organization of the local churchea 



230 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

behind the institution of these bodies has framed these general governments, 
organized the churches proper under the law of the gospel, laid out a realm 
of individual immunity, constructed a government and vested it with powers 
either enumerated or residuary. Consequently these centralized church 
governments are unlimited. There is no such thing as an unscriptural act 
of these all-powerful legislative bodies, and in the very nature of things 
there can be no such thing. Whatever these bodies ordain in the way of a 
code of ethics is in fact and in law perfectly permissible ; and whatever these 
bodies do so ordain, provided it has not been forbidden, or otherwise 
ordained by them, and provided the ordaining of it has not been placed by 
them in other hands, is also permissible. No judicial tribunal organized by 
them can pronounce the acts of these bodies even unscriptural. Those who 
are to pass upon the legality of these written rules have seats in these bodies, 
and are consulted whenever any question of the written laws is in issue, but 
their advice may be disregarded with perfect impunity. They have influence 
within these legislative and judicial bodies, but they have no power over 
them, either to nulify their acts or defeat their execution in any particular 
case. The liberty of the local churches and of the individual is thus com- 
pletely at the mercy of these general conferences and assemblies. Hence 
they are utterly despotic governments in theory, however liberal and benevo- 
lent they may be in practice. It is a mixed government, being both aristo- 
cratic and monarchic, not only so, but legislative, executive and judicial, 
in which the great masses have no voice. 

Ecclesiastical power should never be taken for church government, nor 
government for the church. It is the living assembly of the local church 
that constitutes the church, as we will see in another place. The danger of 
taking government for the church is that ostentation and show will become 
the principle ingredient in its life. The government of a church may for a 
long time have so effectively acted upon this principle, and may have 
smothered so entirely all spirituality in the membership, that the church 
may sink low in spiritual power, so that when the time comes for it to show 
its strength, the church may break down and fail to answer the great end 
of its institution — may become neither hot nor cold. It but illy becomes a 
body of Baptists to ape that formality we see in other quarters. Let Bap- 
tists beware lest they depart from the simplicity of the gospel. It is but 
natural that these things should grow upon a people, and most assuredly 
will do so unless they are on their guard. Brilliant, external, ritualistic 
success and self-aggrandizement is not a true index to ecclesiastical success ; 
we should stop to consider whether spiritual degradation and ruin does not 
follow this external success. The churches in which we see displayed the 
most fashion, wealth, stiffness and formality are not those in which there is 
the greatest growth in grace, and not always most eminent for spirituality 
and humility of spirit. Good ethical customs and usages may beget order 
and decorum in a church where ritualistic fomality has instilled little true 
religion into the tempers of men. I think that if anywhere ecclesiastical 
history teaches in bold examples the value of simplicity and humility, and 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF TPIE GOSPEL. 231 

the hoUowness of ritualistic show and formality, in religious worship, it is 
taught in the history of the Baptists. It is to be hoped that the common 
sense of our people will abundantly save them from this evil tendency. 

One of the most powerful agencies in the generation of ethical relations 
between Baptists in the absence of the power to make written rules is our 
love for the church. Our love for the church forms the transition and link 
between the brethren and the church as the aggregate of living men, with 
their associations arising out of their ethical relations one to another. It is 
that sympathy which brings brotherly love into the churches, and without 
which the churches would often be nothing more than any other secular 
society. Any other interest might unite men into churches, but it might 
also sever. Without brotherly love and a true love for our churches, men 
would separate into different sects, hostile factions and parties, and interest 
alone would not be able to supply the bond. Used in this connection broth- 
erly love and love for our church may be defined to be the whole body of 
those affections which unite the hearts of the membership to their church. 
It is for any church a most indispensable element in true church development, 
and infuses life and vigor into all parts of our denomination, and produces 
mutual support and Christian development ; God has implanted it in the 
human heart as much as he implanted filial love in the heart of the child. 
It is a good thermometer by which to judge whether a man be a Christian. 
It is made up of a thousand associations and influences. It requires a well- 
ordered and orderly church to keep it alive and fruitful. Our attachments 
must not only be for our church, but it must be denominational. As our 
rules of ethics, customs and usages extend over the whole denomination and 
enlarge instead of narrowing our views, so must brotherly love encompass 
the whole denomination. 

As every Baptist church is self-instituted and self-governed it should be 
self-developed and self-sustaining. This should be its first object. A church 
which, therefore, neglects its own development, and instinctively seeks to 
help every one else, as a field of action for its energy fails to answer one of 
the great ends of its institution. It is like the farmer who neglects the cul- 
tivation of his own farm, and spends his substance in the purchase of more 
land, and is known by experienced agriculturists to be the poorest of his 
class. As soon as a church abandons the extensive improvement of itself, 
both temporally as well as spiritually, it enters on its downward course, and 
loses the influence which otherwise might have been its share. The truest, 
most intense, and the most enduring influence a church can exercise upon 
others is through its own internal agencies and their progressive development 
and perfection. A Baptist church, in itself, looked at from a human stand- 
point, is but an humble institution, yet it is the most indispensable means to 
obtain the highest end, that the gospel may be preached and sinful men 
brought happily converted into its folds. The church was made for man, 
for he stands incalculably higher than the church ; for, that he may be able 
to be all that God would have him be and all that he ought to be, the church 
exists, and each member has a soul that over which the church can never 



2S2 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

extend, because it will outlive the churcli. Nevertheless, the church is 
worthy of every sacrifice, for it is the institution of institutions, the deposi- 
tory of all ecclesiastical power on earth, Christ's judicatory, the ark of the 
covenant, in which the sacred law of the gospel is kept, the Holy of Holies, 
into which every man who is properly prepared has an equal right to enter. 

The question then arises, how do these germinal ethical laws in Baptist 
church government take their root and have a commencement in the absence 
of ecclesiastical legislation? I answer in a sentence of two words: By 
voting. This is the usual way of ascertaining the will of any church respect- 
ing the adoption or rejection of any measure coming before it for deter- 
mination. Whenever a church must come to a final conclusion and joint 
action, voting must be resorted to if there be any unanimity among them' 
By the voting of the whole church public opinion passes into public will, 
and this public will, if correct and Scriptural, passes into an ecclesiastical 
law. We see this practice introduced in the very earliest times of the 
churches. By this practice the very first ministers under the gospel dis- 
pensation were made, and, indeed, the vacancy in the number of the apostles 
was filled by voting, or casting of lots. And they gave forth their lots; and 
the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered ivith the eleven apostles. It 
it is needless to say that this was done by an assembled local church. The 
true idea is that the will of God is wrapped up in the vote of every true 
church of Christ, for it is said : " And they prayed^ and said, Thou, Xorc/, 
which Icnowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these two thou hast 
chosen^ Many instances might be added to show where the early churches 
decided everything by the process of voting. In the Episcopal and Presby- 
terian forms of government it is quite different. Everything is done by 
direct legislation and by appointment. Laws come from these legislative 
bodies full fledged and in full force. This kind of law ceases to have its 
own life, and the church ceases strictly to live under the law of the gospel, 
but under the rule of those who may be wise above that which is written. 
It lives under the dictating or interfering power of others, because each time 
that a rule passes over from an abstraction into a reality, it is subject to that 
power, be it either the church or a legislative body. 

As, by voting, opinion pas&cs into the will of the church, the extent of the 
right of voting, who shall vote, and the subjects which shall depend upon 
voting, what subjects shall depend upon mere majorities, what shall require 
two-thirds votes, the question of majorities and pluralities— all these sub- 
jects are in principle or practice in Baptist churches of the greatest import- 
ance, and should not be passed over in a treatise like this. In the first place 
I would lay it down as a law of the churches that every member has the 
right to vote upon every question which may come before the church for de- 
cision. It is the birthright of ecclesiastical freedom. In the second place 
no member of the church from disinterestedness, indolence or moral cow- 
ardice should be allowed to refuse to join in that manner of expressing his 
opinion. A member who for any cause does not attend upon the business 
meetings of his church and does not stand ready to assume his share of the 



OR, THE COMMON- LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 233 

responsibility of casting his vote knows little of the importance of tlie insti- 
tution of the church, or must be animated by very little pride and public 
spirit. I kuov/ that some churches would deprive their young children and 
female members of this right, but nothing can be more contrary to the 
genius of true church polity. Some churches likewise have a custom of re- 
quiring a two-thirds vote to settle certain matters which I believe to be 
equally erroneous and unscriptural. The subject, as being one of right to 
vote alone, belongs properly to church polity, but it is for church ethics to 
consider the moral obligation of every member to attend the church and 
vote, and how he should vote. That there is no safer means of preventing 
factious movements of any kind, and the church from falling a gradual prey 
to calamitous disorders, whenever all are allowed to vote, than to allow all 
the right to vote and to let the majority rule decide in every matter proper 
to be voted upon. If, however, a member is incapable of deciding respect- 
ing a measure by his own knowledge or capacity, and if he finds those he 
has most reason to trust, are divided upon a measure or course of policy, he 
ought not to be swayed by extraneous circumstances, but to abstain from 
voting, but should always be excused from voting by the church of which he 
is a member. 

The protection of the fundamental principles which underlie Baptist 
churches leads to that great institution called in common parlance — the 
minority. A well-organized and fully protected minority, in and out of the 
church — a loyal minority, by which is meant a party which opposes, on 
principle, the administration of the church, or the set of men who have, for 
the time being, the government in their hands, but does so under and within 
the common fundamental law of the churches, is so important an element of 
true church government, whether considered as a protecting fence or a crea- 
tive power, that it would be impossible here to give to the subject that space 
which its importance requires. But if by minority be understood a faction 
of men who consult aside from the church, for instance to turn out a pastor 
whom a few do not like merely to obtain the place for another, it becomes, 
indeed, an odious faction, the very last of those members to whom the gov- 
ernment of the church ought to be entrusted. The ruinous and rapidly de- 
grading effect of such a state of things is directly contrary to a sound system 
of church jurisprudence, and serves as a fearful encouragement to those who, 
ecclesiastically speaking, are the most to be dreaded in church government. 
A legal right of a minority to resist the church is an absurdity, if not a con- 
tradiction in terms ; but few would contest the moral right to overcome the 
majority in extreme cases of misrule under our free form of government ; 
and accordingly I have assumed the existence of such a right in this treatise. 
Few, on the other hand, would deny that such attempts at resistance ought 
only to take place in rare and extreme cases, when there appear to be no 
milder means available for remedying either grave practical misgovernment 
or persistent, deliberate violation of established and important covenanted 
rights and guarantees for good church government. But when popular 
Baptist church government is fully developed and understood the absolute 



234 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

right of deliberate resistance for trivial purposes must be held to become obso- 
lete, for the reasons that the resistance of any part of a church to the will of 
the whole must be a breach of covenant, owiug to the indisputably superior 
right of the whole, and, where there is no heresy involved, to its irresistibly 
superior might. 

But this right of the majority of the church to rule should be thoroughly 
understood. The rule of the majority itself indicates the power of the 
church, its sovereignty ; but power is not always a rule according to the law 
of the gospel. Supj^ose the majority seek to change the form of church 
government, substituting the rule of one man, or a few, for that of the ma- 
jority? Or suppose the majority give away their right of self-government, 
and establish an ecclesiastical despotism to be ruled over by a bishop or a 
pope ? This has been done again and again in other systems of church gov- 
ernment. It is not a rule by the majority every time that constitutes true 
church government, but where the minority is protected, though the majority 
rule. It is the protection of rights and fundamental principles beyond the 
reach of the majority which constitutes true government, not the power of 
the majority. There can be no doubt that the majority ruled when the 
Presbyterian and Episcopal forms of church polity were set up. Was this 
right and Scriptural because the majority did it ? And both these mon- 
archical forms of church government must be supported, or acquiesced in by 
the majority, else they would be reformed and made to conform to the Bible 
system. If the definition be urged, that where the majority rule there is 
true church government, we must ask at once, what majority and how rule ? 
If it be a rule contrary to the law of the gospel it is a nullity and therefore 
void. It is the power of doing all the law of the gospel allows us to do and 
nothing it forbids us to do. This system is no invention of man, is no crea- 
tion of those assembled for the purpose of instituting a church polity accord- 
ing to the majority rule, but is given us by Providence in the living law of 
the gospel. , The merit of Baptists is that they do not destroy or deface the 
work of Providence, but accept it, and organize tho churches in harmony 
with the real order, the real elements given them. They suffer themselves 
in all their positive substantial work to be governed by reality, not by theo- 
ries and speculations. In this they prove themselves loyal to Christ, and 
their work survives and will ever survive till he comes again to reign with 
his people upon earth. 

There is a question of practical importance which is necessary to discuss 
in a treatise like this which occupies itself professedly with ethics in connec- 
tion with the churches. The question is : What is the true relation of the 
ministry to an independent system of church polity? Baptists have long 
since solved that great ecclesiastical problem, as to how to give sufficient 
power to the ministry, and, at the same time to prevent them from usurping 
more, and uniting into a formidable aristocracy of official places. I do not 
know that anything redounds more to the honor of the Baptist ministry than 
the readiness with which they eschew ecclesiastical power and self aggran- 
dizement, and labor for the churches and the salvation of souls. Baptist 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 235 

ministers remember that the churches do not exist for them, but that God 
has called them into the ministry to serve the churches and not to serve 
themselves. A church may exist without a pastor, but a pastor can not 
exist without a church. Baptist church jurisprudence lays down the prin- 
ciple that the pastorate of a church is not descendible property, like some 
hereditament, but a descendible trust, falling into the hands of such as the 
church may from time to time elect to fill that office under the call of the 
Holy Spirit. The pastor has power to do but little else than to preach the 
gospel and to administer the ordinances of the church ; and these preroga- 
tives, as any others he may have, belong to his ministerial character, and 
proves no sovereignty in himself, for it would always be a second-hand 
sovereignty, that of the church being superior to it. Is it not clear, then, 
that the church is the fountain of all ecclesiastical power, and the minister 
merely the medium through which ministerial functions flow. If, 
therefore, church sovereignty must be somewhere, it certainly is not in the 
ministry that we find it, and if it is nevertheless applied to the ministry, it 
means nothing more than executive power within and under the church itself 
to preach the gospel and to administer the ordinances, which comes from 
sources of superior power than from themselves. The ministry is not 
invested with authority to create a power to rule distinct with themselves. 
Each church, however, chooses its own officers, including both pastor and 
deacons, who have in themselves specific rights and duties peculiar to them, 
each holding the station belonging to them, and performing their appropriate 
duties. They, therefore, together with the membership, constitute the 
government. It follows as a necessary consequence, that the sovereign 
power and the government are the same, and that they cannot be separated 
from each other. It is only in church governments in which the member- 
ship of each church possesses the sovereignty that the two powers can be 
placed in distinct bodies ; nor can they in them otherwise than by the insti- 
tution of a government by covenant, to which all the membership are 
parties, and in which those who fill the offices are made their representatives 
and servants. 

It will not do to say that the ministry exists by divine right alone and 
therefore they have the right to usurp the government of the churches and 
rule them as best pleases themselves. But surely the membership of the 
churches exist also by divine right, and, what is more, God has ordained 
that the ministry shall exist by their choice and election under the call of 
the Holy Spirit. When they trangress the laws of God do not the member- 
ship arraign, try and excommunicate them from the church? Of what then 
are they the divine rulers ? Are they rulers by divine right in their own 
persons, without reference to this choice, calling and election, then why are 
they not rulers from the moment of their birth, and not by the election and 
choice of the churches ? Until we are shown individual ministers who are, 
somehow or other rulers by divine right within themselves without the 
consent of the churches, we cannot believe in the absurd dogma of the divine 
right of the ministry. There must, then, be something beyond them, which 



236 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPBUDENCE ; 

keeps a minister in his high offics ; it cannot be inherent. It is the local 
church, which is infinitely above the minister, wliich can see him pass 
away, and yet it remains the same. It is the Baptist ministry alone who are 
able to penetrate and understand the true character of this office. They 
understand that the minister is for the church, and not the church for the 
minister so much. When they are elevated to the ministerial office, they 
feel -that the membership has granted pre-eminence to one of their equals only. 
There have always been flatterers who would tickle the ears of the ministry 
with these ruinous theories which have done so much to curse the Christian 
world and brought true religion into disrepute. But be it said to the ever- 
lasting honor of the Baptist ministry, they have never thought of claiming 
for themselves a position above the law of the Gospel, which they understand 
they can in reality never occupy. 

Those high church dignitaries who consider themselves the special agents 
and self-selected vicegerents of the Deity, and not only so, but themselves 
able to control, at least to a certain extent, the divine actions, any minister 
possessed of these whimsical notions, and educated in that mystical theory 
of morals so generally prevalent outside of Baptist circles, wliich makes the 
divine pleasure the foundation of all moral distinctions, very easily imagines 
their own wills and that of the Deity to be the same, and very easily substi- 
tutes their wills, under the idea of its being the divine will, as the true 
foundation and actual test of all ecclesiastical government on earth. The 
influence of this superstitious mysticism keeps those under it in a state of 
abject, unquestioning, willing, submission, at the feet of those claiming to be 
God's vicegerents, and makes them look with fear and hatred upon every- 
thing which has a tendency to diminish the power of the priesthood. 

On principle and according to common reason and still more common 
sense there is no such thing as priestly aposto'ic succession in ecclesiasticial 
jurisprudence. According to the process of reasoning by which this doctrine 
can only be maintained, is that upon the death of an apostle that office 
passed to the legal successor immediately upon the death of the predecessor, 
without any process or ceremony of transference or ordination or consecra- 
tion, and even without the knowledge of the successor. This implies the 
perpetual existence of a royal house or line of apostolic lords, whose com- 
mencement and foundation reaches far back to the apostles themselves 
and has retained its identity and hold upon the Christian world ; has kept 
and still keeps attached to itself the only divine and capable personalities in 
the church suitable for rulers of the churches of Christ. This would be a 
kind of a hereditary government in which the church confers the powers of 
government upon a person standing in a certain ecclesiastical family relation 
to his immediate predecessor. This is certainly a strait and narrow way for 
a hereditary ecclesiastical ruler to walk in ; but certain popes and bishops 
have found it perfectly easy and practicable. From this criterion the bishop 
of New York, for example, ought to be able to trace with unerring certainty 
his apostolic genealogy back through the past nineteen hundred Christian 
centuries, even through the dark ages, to Peter, Andrew, Paul or some other 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 237 

one of the apostles. The aforesaid bishop might have ecclesiastical acumen 
enough to know with the stretch of his imagination, who his predecessors 
were, and how they were made, but how can he know who his successor will 
be, is beyond the ken of human knowledge. The Scriptures do not pretend 
to unravel these deep mysteries, and no one can say that the Scriptures are 
less logical than the common sense of common mortals. 

Any system of ethics which has grown up and by universal consent has 
become assented to becomes thus the law of the churches ; but as to fellow- 
ship and communion with organizations not of our faith and order no such 
mutual fellowship or obligation passes between Baptists and them, nor ought 
to pass by direction of the law of the gospel ; for we neither find that the 
Scripture, by virtue of its absolute authority, commands us to maintain any 
communion with them, nor do they sustain any fellowship towards us arising 
from covenant. From which defect, on account of the disorders practised by 
them there arises, as it were, a state of non-fellowship between us and them, 
and by reason of which difference in faith and practice communion with 
them would be displeasing to God, as it is equally so to those in whose 
custody he has confided the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. As lovers and 
defenders of the ti-uth Baptists ought to oppose this communion. The con- 
sciousness that we ought not to mix error with the truth, the impossibility of 
mixing oil with water, and the great ethical law of the churches, which 
springs from the teachings of the apostles, and directly from the ethic nature 
of believers in Christ, make it necessar}' that we should have nothing in an 
ecclesiastical way to do with those who have apostatized from the faith and 
order of Christ's churches. The Baptist church or minister who invites an 
alien minister to preach in its, or his, pulpit ought to be ready and willing 
to say amen to all he says. If the seeds of heresy be thus deposited where 
the truth should otherwise be sown, the church is responsible before God. 
Pulpit non-affiliation is one of the great common laws of Baptist churches, in 
the breach of which they have everything to lose and nothing to gain. 

Church members, especially in these modern times, are drawn together by 
important ethical relations other than ecclesiastical, in smaller societies 
whioh have a kind of government. The most venerable of these is the 
weekly prayer meeting of the church, which has had a continuous life 
rivaling that of the churches in duration and importance to their members. 
But there are various other organizations mostly with narrower and more 
temporary aims, such as councils, committees, missionary societies, unions 
and leagues, which are of vast importance and usefulness in the social and 
rehgious life of our modern churches. All these have as their bond of union 
brotherly love and fraternal fellowship, and each have a kind of quasi- 
government, the structure of which will often resemble more or less closely 
that of the church itself. The control of all such organizations should be 
vested in, and be under the government of the churches whose permission 
should be obtained for their organization ; but most of the detailed regula- 
tions of them should be left to the societies themselves. If penalties are 
found necessary for a breach of ethical rules, as is sometimes the case, some 



238 

quasi-judicial machinery may be formed for determining whether such 
penalties have been incurred; so that all the fundamental functions of 
government are brought into exercise. Such penalties can extend no further 
than exclusion from the benefits of the society, and from voluntary relations 
with its members. Any individual who withdraws from these societies and 
is content to have nothing further to do with their members, can suffer no 
further penalty, except that if by withdrawal he commits a breach of 
covenant from which the society suffers damage, he ought to be willing to 
make adequate reparation, just as if he had broken any other contract. 
Churches should be slow to invest these societies with large grants of power, 
and it is only to a very minor extent that this grant of governmental power 
is likely to be expedient at all. In whatever they do they ought to be con- 
sidered as the agent of the churches and should never be permitted to do 
anything that would bring reproach upon the church of which it is an in- 
tegral part. By no means ought they ever to assume ecclesiastical powers, 
the performance of which in the least lessens the dignity of church authority. 
If they do it should constitute an adequate ground for special repressive in- 
tervention, and their action should be prohibited and suppressed, even though 
a part of their operations may be perfectly lawful. 

The facility with which these extra-ecclesiastical societies can and have 
been organized in and under the auspices of our Baptist churches of recent 
years has been, by some of our wisest brethren, considered a source of alarm. 
They consider that each society if not carefully guarded and regulated, bears 
within it the germ of more or less danger and ecclesiastical weakness, either 
towards the churches or their own individual members, for the simple reason 
even if there were no other, that it increases intensity of action, and separates, 
in some degree at least, the associated members from the church itself, and 
subjects them to separate ethical rules of action. If the whole church were 
to engage in the work of these various societies as a church it is contended 
the effects would not be so apparent, but they are generally and necessarily 
extra-ecclesiastical. We shall in this treatise find a place to treat of the 
necessary usefulness of regular Baptist associations and conventions, but each 
church must determine what are lawful and proper societies within its juris- 
diction and what are not. Generally speaking every society is unlawful 
which in the least attempts to exercise ecclesiastical authority, or which in- 
terferes with the rights of the church, for ecclesiastical ethics demand that 
the church should suppress all societies which in any way detract from the 
dignity of the church or in any manner interferes with its rights or brings 
reproach upon its fair name. Those societies will in general be the most 
harmless and useful which have a simple clearly defined object openly stated. 
But when selfish ends become the object of societies, it must be remembered 
that tliey easily superinduce a spirit of exclusiveness, of supposed superiority 
over the church, by promoting the selfish interests of those engaged in them 
only, in the various ways of social dependence, who, seeing that they are in 
need of the aid of such societies for worldly purposes, accommodate them- 
selves outwardly to them to the injury of the churches. The more numerous 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 239 

and compact these societies become, the more their numbers are apt to valua 
the interests of the societies higher than those of the churches, and sometimes 
to end in adapting an ethical code or standard of their own, to be judged of 
only by the promotion of the selfish interests of those societies alone. 

Then again in a free and independent system of church polity there is this 
additional danger, that such societies once formed, and having obtained a 
strong hold upon the affections and sympathies of its members, must easily 
become channels and vessels of factious agitations and dissensions. There 
are many questions, some religious, some social, and not a few political, 
which at times have been so interesting to all members of our churches, that 
they alone, without any additional aid, have a sufficient tendency to create 
divisions and separations, frequently disturbing the plain and easy inter- 
course of these societies, and not unfrequently the churches themselves. 
Nor can it be denied that experience amply proves that these quasi religious 
subjects, whenever mixed up with and agitated by these societies, become 
injurious to the churches, and may end in fanaticism of one sort or another. 
I do not pretend to deny that there is a great moral power in mutually coun- 
tenancing these societies, and the vices with which we are surrounded may 
have become so general, or have obtained such a strong hold upon society at 
large that the individual Avill be too weak or frail to contend against them. 
But if these are legitimate things to be contended against, why not let the 
church, as a church, undertake the task? Or, better still, would it not be 
more in keeping with the true church ethics for the churches to steer clear 
of these quasi religious matters and let Christians band themselves together, 
not under the auspices of the churches, but as individuals, to right the 
wrongs we see in society? A dispassionate view of the subject leads us to 
believe that it is far more beneficial to the churches and to society for indi- 
viduals to take their stand boldly and prevail on others to join their 
endeavors outside the churches, and to promote their common views, than 
to form a specific society in the church for that purpose. In other words, do 
not mix the church up with worldly afiairs. 

Baptist young people should remember that they live under a government 
of fixed, determinate gospel laws. The code of their government is shaped 
by the letter and spirit of the Bible alone. It is a matter of the greatest pos- 
sible import that the last-named proposition shall receive not even a con- 
structive violation. Every successive act which tends in that direction opens 
more widely a door through which schisms will ultimately enter, and consign 
the cause of Bible church government to forced and unmerited oblivion. 
Every law, indeed, which cannot draw to itself the complete and unqualified 
sanction of our whole denomination actually offers a premium upon just 
such lawlessness as sometimes we see displayed among our people. In our 
close adherence to Bible truth and teachings and their fixity lies the safety 
of all forms of church government. This fixity is sought in unscriptural 
systems by setting up adjuncts to the church of Christ and attempting to 
endow them with ecclesiastical life. It is sought in Baptist church govern- 
ment by making the Bible the exclusive guide of governmental action. Let 



240 ' A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

any people surrender their right to rule to one man or to a few, depart from 
the provision of the Bible in one instance, and who shall presume to hold 
that similar action shall not be taken in another? Where is the watchman 
who shall have the sagacity to determine when the ultimate limit of such de- 
parture shall have been reached, and, more difficult still, will he be respected 
when he speaks ? So long as our Baptist people assume to live under and have 
regard for a Bible form of government, just so long must they see to it that our 
organic law is preserved inviolate, or else incur the penalties which will im- 
mediately attach to its violation. The only legitimate way to here establish 
a new system, or to extend the old, is by a new revelation from Heaven, 
which is not likely to come soon. Whether or not it is lawful or desirable 
at this epoch of our history, that Baptist churches should have their 
authority extended over these many extra-ecclesiastical institutions of com- 
paratively local import which it is difficult, and to some extent powerless, 
to control, is one of the greatest questions which Baptists are called upon to 
solve. The usefulness or desirability of these various societies are neither 
denied or affirmed. I am here dealing with Baptist church government. 
In view of our peculiar form of polity — and that it is peculiar and delicate 
no thinking Baptist can deny — the paramount duty of our people is to in- 
flexibly pursue the course which, as a whole denomination, will alone assure 
us present safety and future existence — namely, protect the fixity of our form 
of church government. The attainment of this end is possible only by giving 
the most complete obedience to the mandate : Stand by the letter and spirit of 
our organic law, the Bible. Abide by the Bible, and the Baptists live ; de- 
stroy it, and they will soon sleep in the embrace of ecclesiastical oblivion, 
which they will deserve through disobedience. 

Then again, church ethics have evolved another rule, the breach of which 
has brought degradation to the churches of Christ, that is, that pastors 
should never preach politics from their pulpits in times of political excite- 
ment. The evil effects of these political harangues, as they have appeared 
of late, may, perhaps, thus be summed up : They degrade the church and 
bring it down on the level of a political mass meeting for campaign party 
purposes ; they degrade the minister and bring him down upon the level of 
the politician, and make him the laughing-stock of all right-thinking peo- 
ple ; they lower the high standard of the gospel, and make it subservient to 
the evil designs of a misguided man ; they destroy the respect of the mem- 
bership for the pastor, especially if they happen to differ from him in poli- 
tics, as they likewise create divisions and dissensions in the churches of 
which they are pastors. A Baptist preacher with a political mission is a 
misnomer and richly deserves all the contempt in which he is held by intel- 
ligent men. Christ has commissioned him to preach the gospel, and at the 
same time declaring that His Kingdom is not of this world. Baptists 
everywhere and at all times have labored to separate religion and worldly 
affairs, the church from the state, while the political preacher would unite 
the two. The founder of Christianity gave some pretty explicit directions 
to his disciples when he sent them out to convert the world, but it will be 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 241 

generally admitted that in omitting to instruct them to preach politics from 
the pulpit, he left a gap in the religious edifice which has been worthily filled 
by the political preachers of to-day. That minister of the gospel whom the 
Holy Spirit has called to preach and who acknowledges the binding obliga- 
tion of the commission, Go preach the gospel to every creature^ is not allowed 
to preach politics, however pressing the case may appear at the moment, and 
whatever advantage at the moment may deceive his eyes, is too evident to 
be dwelt upon here. Rather than engage in the disreputable business of 
preaching politics from the pulpit a minister had better flee to the mountains 
of Hepsidara and gnaw a file the balance of his ministerial lifetime. 

The more ministers meddle with politics, the more, in the natural course 
of things, is religion carried over to politics, and the more we are exposed 
to fanaticism and persecution, open violent, or secret and indirect. Baptists 
cannot be too careful to have these two diametrically opposite elements 
separate, for it is contrary to Baptist teachings in all ages of the world. 
There are many proofs that religion, instead of being the balm of life, 
becomes, if once brought into contact with party strife, the fiercest of all 
excitements. The history of the present political contest (fall of 1896), 
when some of our Baptist ministers have become political preachers would 
alone suffice to check ministerial rashness in this respect forever. It is not 
only against the most essential interest of the church, but of the minister, 
and the cause for which he harangues, if the pulpit is turned into a rostrum 
of political strife. Besides it is also unfair in the highest degree. The 
minister has not been called by the Holy Spirit and ordained for that pur- 
pose, nor supported to preach politics. As a gentleman, alone, he ought 
never to make use of that place where no one can answer him, to debate 
politics. Is he not, among gentlemen, considered peculiarly exempt from 
insults because he is known to be unable to answer them like other men? 
On a similar principle he ought to abstain from political discussions or allu- 
sions in the pulpit. Civil liberty is in danger and can no where exist, when 
the ministry act thus against their own sacred calling. That the minister 
cannot violate these rules if he becomes a political preacher, and must inter- 
fere by doing so with his own essential efficiency as a pastor, is evident. 
While all ministers should take an interest in public aflTairs, yet under no 
circumstances can he aflford to preach political harangues from the pulpit. 

Some ministers, sad to say, have a metaphysical, speculative spirit — specu- 
lation for the sake of speculation — for the joy and excitement of intellectual 
activity — preaching for the sake of display and not for the conversion and 
salvation of the lost, but as a kind of gymnastic training to produce mental 
strength, agility and dexterity, not to be used to attain any spiritual result 
except to feed the fancy of men and to starve their poor hungry souls. 
They pride themselves in the art of wording skillfully and dexterously 
planting a blow. They are fond of debate for the sake of debate ; for the 
intellectual activity, which comes of dispute, and the glory of victory. The 
truly gospel preacher, whom the Lord has called to preach, and imbued with 
his spirit, are but fledgelings and nestlings in their sight, crying for food, and 
16 



242 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JUEISPRUDENCE ; 

are not able to soar into the realms of intellectual sky-scraping lest they fall 
and break their limbs ; but what they do preach is the power of God unto 
the salvation of the soul. The metaphysical preacher deludes us wdth 
promises of essential knowledge, and cheats us with gilded apples full of 
ashes ; while the old fashioned gospel preacher gives us the nourishing bread 
of eternal life — food fit for the soul of man — coarse it may be, and sometimes 
homel}^, but wholesome bread, such as is suited and necessary to our spiritual 
life and growth in grace. Oh ! that the Lord would convert our meta- 
physical preachers and turn them into preachers of the everlasting gospel of 
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, else silence them forever by putting 
them out of the ministry. The gospel is said to be. The power of God unto 
the salvation of the soul. That being a gospel truism, that cannot be gain- 
said that, whenever a sermon is preached, and the salvation of some soul is 
not the result, he who preaches that sermon, ought to ask himself, seriously, 
whether in truth it be the gospel that has been preached ? 

It belongs to the province of general ethics as applied to church govern- 
ment to discuss the question as to the Scriptural ness and expediency of the 
ordination of women to preach the gospel. I know that this is a mooted 
question, delicate in its nature, upon both sides of which are arrayed some 
of our strongest brethren. But one who essays to lay down rules of ethics 
in church government should not hesitate to add the weight of his opinion 
to the one side or the other of so important a question as this as he thinks 
right. I believe that the whole tenor of the gospel teaching is against the 
ordination of women to the office of the ministry. But supposing that the 
gospel were silent upon the subject, there is one thing we do know that the 
customs and usages of the Baptist churches are against it, and those customs 
and usages cannot be broken in upon without demolishing one of the great 
landmarks of the churches of Christ. Not only the teachings of the great 
apostle are against it, but the almost universal practice of the churches is 
against it. The same obstacles in the way to the elevation to the bench, the 
bar and to political office has kept her out of the pulpit and consigned her 
to a sphere of Christian work and activity in our churches far more import- 
ant and far more becoming the many graces and virtues which have always 
adorned her life. The great apostle said most emphatically: Let your women 
keep silent in the churches. Therefore this is the divine order of things — 
not one of the common laws of the gospel, growing up by reasonable inter- 
pretation of the same, but a veritable thus sayeth the law, and has eaiiy and 
always been acknowledged as such by Baptist churches all over the world. 
By this plain teaching of God's word let our churches stand, and let him 
who would teach otherwise be regarded as a disturber of the denominational 
tranquillity. 

There is no one question in church ethics so well settled not only by the 
laws of the gospel, but by the universal practice of the churches as the 
public ministry of women, and I doubt very seriously whether God ever 
called one to publicly preach the gospel. And yet our churches would not 
be half what they are without her work and influence. Her true sphere 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 243 

assigned by God is to serve and to wait at the feet of the Master, not onlj 
SO, but to act as wife, mother, daughter and sister, and through these ethical 
relations to bless, not only the church, but society at large in a degree far 
more useful than to preach the gospel, which is alone the province of man. 
A woman loses her natural character as well as her religious influence as 
she attempts to enter into the public preaching of the gospel, and whenever 
this fundamental law of the gospel is violated, evil ensues as in every other 
case of deviation from the laws of God and nature. As the laws of society 
prompt that she should not judge in the courts, nor debate in the halls of 
legislature, nor take a direct part in politics, so should she not preach ; if 
she does so it is always to the injury of herself and of society and of the 
church in which she attempts to exercise that office. This does not deprive 
her of the right to teach in private and do the work of a missionary if she 
feels called of the Lord so to do. In all religious work woman is but the 
helpmeet as she is in the family, yet deeply interested in these things. 
Likewise do I consider it highly derogatory to their position and character 
if they hold public meetings and make platform speeches, as they now very 
often do in these degenerate times. 

The reason for this divine order of things is that our Christian woman 
loses in the same degree her natural character, as women, as they enter the 
pulpit and go upon the platform, or go into publicity generally. Baptist 
church jurisprudence, however, does not underrate the capacity or usefulness 
of women ; there are, of course, women, whose extraordinary gifts and 
mental organizations is such that they are indispensable to church work; 
but whenever this fundamental principle is abandoned as a general rule, 
evil ensues as in every other case of deviation from the laws of the gospel 
and nature. To be thrust into the pulpit and upon the platform women 
would necessarily lose their peculiar character as Christian women, and thus 
a necessary element of Christian civilization would be extinguished, and a 
subversion of the whole moral order of things would be the consequence. 
Nothing of the kind was ever heard of in the days of the apostles and very 
earliest times of the churches, and to those days and to those primitive times 
Baptists go for inspiration and instruction. Had Christ and his apostles 
intended that women should preach the gospel they would have doubtless 
accounted them worthy by putting them into the ministry. The history of the 
apostolic churches is full of the brightest examples of many women who 
labored nobly for the spread of the gospel, as we see in our own times how 
devotedly, how assiduously and how lovingly they labor in the cause of the 
Master. What would our churches be without them ? What minister 
would prefer to take charge of a church where there were no women to hold 
up his hands ? Let not our noble Christian women meddle with spheres 
which would deprive her of her womanly character, and then her name will 
be held dear and in living remembrance for ever. 

The practice some churches have of a rapid change in pastors, of changes 
for the sake of change, and of selections frequently made of other pastors 
in utter and notorious disregard of the suitableness of those who are to fill 



244 A theatise upon baptist church jueispkudence ; 

these vacancies, is based on a total misconception, or a false idea of the 
sacredness of this ethical relation, and is weakening to the ministerial 
function. The administration of church affairs, if not an art, is at least an 
occupation and a labor in which a knowledge of men and measures, and a 
skill and knowledge of church details are indispensable, and can only be 
acquired by practice and long experience. The ethical relation of pastor 
and people is a sacred one, akin to that of husband and wife, and should 
not be dissolved for trivial causes. Without the observance of this rule, 
the office of the ministry is but a plaything — all theory and no practice. 
But within this rule, all change and rotation of pastors, merely for the sake 
of change and rotation, are a positive loss to the churches ; this is true since 
a knowledge of these things is a matter not learned in a few months or a 
year, and as each church should be solicitous to avail itself of the benefits 
of the pastoral experience of those in office, and who are in other respects 
as competent and eligible as those who may be chosen to supplant them 
merely on the principle of change. And it must be remembered that this 
wholesome rule of church ethics applies not only to the church, but to the 
pastors as well. No pastor ought to resolve himself into a pastorate jumper 
and a place-hunter. There was a class of soldiers in the late war known as 
"bounty-jumpers " — men who after having enlisted in the army, and having 
been paid a bounty for enlisting would cowardly desert the army and again 
enlist and again desert for the sake of the bounty. I would not be so severe 
as to liken any minister to these bounty -jumpers, but I desire only to 
caution our ministers against the practice of a restless and everlasting 
change of pastorates, which I am sure is as contrary to the spirit of the 
gospel as it is injurious to the churches. 

If a pastor is thus bound by the laws of the gospel to his pastorate w^hat 
of his maintenance while thus in charge of the church ? The law upon this 
subject is very plain. Who goeth to warfare any time at his own charge f 
WIio planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof^ or who feedeth a 
flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock f Say I these things as a man ? 
or saith not the laiu the same also? For it is written in the law of Moses j 
Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth 
God take care for oxen f If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a 
great thing if we shall reap your carnal things f Do ye not know that they 
which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple f and they 
which wait at the altar arepartakers with the altar f Even so hath the Lord 
ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel. Thus 
spoke the great apostle. It is very manifest from this that the pastor shall 
plow and sow in hope of a crop, and reap in the hope of eating the fruit of 
his labor in the gospel. He should, therefore, put a just value upon his ser- 
vices as they are valued among the churches, by the common rate of justice 
current among men according to the ability of the church to pay for those 
services. The preparation for this high office is long, laborious and expen- 
sive. In worldly callings men's salaries are fixed in proportion to what is 
required of them. The more and greater benefits any calling brings, the 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 245 

more it is prized and valued. If pastors bring in spiritual blessings to the 
church it is but just that they should partake of those carnal blessings which 
the members of his flock enjoy. It is not only a labor of love for the good 
of souls, but it is the labor of the mind which spends the best energies of a 
man and preys upon his very vitals, and, therefore, it is the greatest labor to 
which a man can be subjected. Hence the pastor himself in this sacred office 
of Christ has a right by previous agreement to set a value on the merits of 
his service, as well as the church calling him, who are the other party to the 
contract, as in all other like engagements. 

That which is justly due from the church to the pastor for his services 
should never be considered as a gift, but as a debt, and is not to be left to 
the arbitrary determination of the church alone. As the call of a pastor 
and his acceptance of the call is a matter of mutual agreement, so his salary 
is to be settled by a like agreement according to the ability and usefulness 
of the pastor, as well as the ability of the church to pay. As Christ ordains 
the institution of the church and calls men into the ministry, so he ordains 
a rule of ethics for the maintenance of pastors. This maintenance is due in 
justice to pastors as they are laborers, by the same rule that the law gives to 
the laborer in other callings, who is said to be worthy of his hire. And yet 
as pastors are the ordained ministers of God, and serve in the public worship 
of God, therefore offerings made to them are offerings to God, and thus they 
are gifts to God as well as dues to the pastor. To leave all, therefore, only 
to the free-will offerings of the church and cut off all fixed salary, is to put 
our pastors into a worse condition than any other class of men. Surely God 
has not bound his faithful ministers to these hard terms. What peculiar 
burden has God laid upon pastors more than upon men in other callings, 
that they should depend merely on free-will offerings to maintain themselves 
and those dependent upon them ? This maintenance is given to the pastor 
for the Lord's sake, and so it is honoring God with our substance, and sow- 
ing to the Spirit and to spiritual ends. Pastors are called by the church 
under either an express or implied promise to pay for their services, and if 
they are not dealt with justly by the church, they have a right to leave the 
church on the ground of a breach of covenant. Besides, pastors are ex- 
pected to be charitable and hospitable to others, but how can they be 
charitable and hospitable unless they have that wherewith to bestow these 
bounties ? 

Whenever a number of churches, whether few or many, enter into voluntary 
associations, the rules adopted by them to carry on missionary and other 
enterprises, should be strictly adhered to by all churches co-operating with 
them. No one should be allowed to constitute himself an agent to carry on 
work for which they were organized. Whatever is done should be accom- 
plished through the regularly constituted boards of these bodies, and by the 
agents appointed by them. Often do we see self-constituted agents going 
about within the bounds of our associations, as missionaries, preaching in an 
aimless way, holding a commission from no church or other body, making 
their own collections and disposing of the same in a manner as best pleases 



246 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

themselves. Such habitual disregard of all rules of order, in an association 
or convention, not only produces confusion and clashing of action, but it 
leads to a want of trust and confidence in those who take it upon themselves 
thus to act. It is needless to say that a self-appointed agent is honest and 
well-intentioned, and in no danger of misapplying funds thus collected from 
the churches. These associations have their plans laid out, and missionaries 
already in the field, and need all the money the churches can spare to carry 
them out ; besides, if one man is allowed to thus act in opposition to all 
organized eflTort, another can claim the. same right and has a carte blanche 
to go around and depredate upon the churches at will. The churches by 
uniting in these associated bodies, cede to them the right to make these regu- 
lations, and all churches ought to observe them strictly and see to it that no 
member of their congregations, whether minister or layman, violate them. 
Though they may have a right to violate this wholesome rule, it is inexpedi- 
ent, and in many cases decidedly wrong, because of its inexpediency to make 
use of this right, if they thereby disorganize the work and expose the boards 
of the associations to embarrassments. Once destroy this government of 
these bodies, if government you can call it, and every man will take the 
rule in his own hands, and chaos and confusion will be the result. All 
stability of church government, so important as this to the cause of. Christ, 
would be undermined, if churches or individuals should be allowed to tram- 
ple so important a rule as this under foot. 

There is one question that very often perplexes church members, which it 
would be well, in this place, to notice. That is, where a member of a 
church applies for a letter of dismissal from his church, to join another 
church of the same faith and order, and there is one or more objections to 
the grant of such a letter. What is the duty of the church in such cases ? 
If the objection be for the want of fellowship, for the retiring member, and 
the objecting parties have had ample opportunity to file charges against him, 
it should constitute no bar to the grant of a letter of dismissal. Or if such 
charges should be preferred against a member wishing to retire from the 
church, and a majority of the church should fail to vote for his excommuni- 
cation, the minority would have no right to further object to the grant of a 
letter of dismissal. And it would, according to the very nature of Baptist 
church polity, not be a contradiction of terms for the letter to state, in the 
usual verbiage, that such retiring member was in full fellowship mid in good 
standing with the church. For it must be remembered, that for all purposes 
of government, the majority of the church is the church, and if he is in 
fellowship with a majority, who is supposed to have just voted a vote of con- 
fidence, he is in fellowship with the church, and the letter should so state. 
And I can see no difference in varying the rule in the reception of a mem- 
ber. If the majority, after due notice and deliberation, should see proper 
to take into the fellowship of the church, a member, bearing a letter from a 
sister church, although a minority should dissent, they should bow to the 
will of the majority. Baptist church government cannot be based upon 
any other principle ; to do so would undermine the whole fabric, and it 



OB, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 247 

would fall to the gound. There is really no more reason why the majority 
should not rule in matters of this nature than in any other case of similar 
importance. It should be borne in mind, however, that I here speak of the 
ecclesiastical right to receive a member into a church under such circum- 
stances. I doubt very seriously the wisdom and the expediency of such a 
course, and a majority in the church as a matter of both policy and principle 
should never impose upon an unwilling and conscientious minority any 
man whose conduct has been such as they do not approve and whom they 
cannot fellowship. Besides, it is always better to ward off trouble than to 
deliberately take it into the church. 

There is no plainer rule of ethics inculcated by Baptist church jurispru- 
dence than the one which teaches obedience not only to ecclesiastical laws, 
but to civil law, and submission to the existing civil government, whatever 
be its form, whether a republic, a monarchy or an aristocracy. It also, 
teaches the principles, and inculcates the practice of justice and humanity- 
charity, peace and good-will to men. But it equally teaches that all gov- 
ernments have legitimate authority to make just and humane laws, and 
no others; and the citizen is enjoined to obey them. When a government 
exceeds its legitimate powers, and makes unjust, cruel and oppressive laws, 
the citizen is generally required by the principles of Christianity, to submit 
to them as a matter of expediency ; because any attempt at resistance will, 
in most cases, only increase the evil ; and because anarchy is generally pro- 
ductive of more evil consequences to a people than tyranny. But when a 
people have endured injustice and great oppression until they are nearly 
unanimous in the opposition to the tyranny, and can make a successful 
resistance and revolutionize the government by methods known to the laws 
of nations, they are justified in doing so ; at least this is the Baptist interpre- 
tation of the Scriptures. The contrary interpretation tends to establish not 
only the divine right of kings and monarchs, princes, popes and bishops, but 
also their unlimited sovereign power to make and enforce laws upon all 
subjects, temporal and spiritual, civil and religious, and to compel obedience 
to them by severe and unusual penalties and punishments, however unjust 
and tyrannical, oppressive and cruel they may be. Under any other 
system of government but the republican form, it has been insisted that the 
gospel imposes upon the citizen the duty of passive obedience, under any 
and all circumstances, to the laws and ordinances of his government. The 
great Baptist family of the earth, wherever they may be, believe that such 
an interpretation may properly be regarded as a perversion of the gospel of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, and the true principles of Christianity, and certainly 
under this view of the case the free government of the United States of 
America could never have been established. And no doubt the early 
Christians were taught submission under certain circumstances, as a matter 
of policy, and not as a duty. But it may be laid down as a general princi- 
ple which Baptists have always followed, that the gospel seeks to inculcate 
its benign principles and doctrines, by preaching and moral suasion, by a 
study of the Scriptures, and not by force nor by law, which is backed up by 



248 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUKISPRUDENCE ; 

force and civil power, to aid in executing it. The gospel gives no counte- 
nance to unjust and oppressive laws; and certainly no countenance to laws 
which attempt to regulate the religious opinions of men ; nor to human 
laws which favor one religious sect in preference to another ; nor to laws 
that donate public moneys for sectarian purposes ; nor to laws which pre- 
scribe the mode in which people may w^orship God; nor to human laws 
which attempt to impose a religious creed upon the people, and to punish 
dissenters, or to impose disabihties upon them. All such laws are per- 
versions of the principles of Christianity and sound ethics, and against 
which Baptists, be it said to their everlasting glory and honor, have ever 
been opposed. Such laws are based on absolutism, self-righteousness, and 
have for their basal rock an assumption of infallibility, and contian the 
very essence of despotism, and always fail to attain the objects and purposes 
for which they were made. 

The powers of ecclesiastical government are properly limited in their 
nature to moral and religious ends and purposes, and to the use of moral 
suasion and moral means. It should rest entirely upon moral and religious 
influences and opinions, and upon moral suasion, and not on force, nor the 
power of coercion It should have no authority over a man's person or his 
property; no power to impose corporeal punishment or restraint of any 
kind ; no power to reach a man's property by taxation or a system of tithes, 
not even for religious uses, but should be supported by voluntary contribu- 
tions and the voluntary donations of individuals. The consideration, dis- 
cussion, and the determination of political questions and all matters of gov- 
ernment should be regarded as foreign to all matters of religion, and should 
be left to legislative bodies, officers of government, political meetings, and 
to the people acting in their civil and secular capacity. It is a pitiable sight 
to see a minister of the gospel preaching politics from the pulpit. The 
pulpit and ecclesiastical bodies should have nothing to do with such subjects, 
and should be entirely separate and distinct from the civil government of the 
country, and be independent of it, except so far as they may need acts of 
incorporation and the aid of the law, in the management of their property 
and secular concerns. Such are the views of Baptists upon the subject of 
civil and ecclesiastical government, which have always been predominant in 
the denomination since the days of the apostles. And they coincide with 
the theory upon which the American system of government is based, and is 
the only one which can secure the civil and religious liberty of the citizen. 

I must be allowed to say that in the conclusion of this chapter that I have 
deviated from my original purpose not to lay down rules proper for the 
government of the churches. As an object of study I have endeavored to 
keep the governmental machinery of the churches held up to the constant 
gaze of the student. But throughout this treatise I have found it hard to 
separate in thought the moral, or ethical phase of the churches from their 
polity, however large a field the two studies may have in common. Eccles- 
iastical rights rather than moral duties must be the task of him who would 
treat properly church polity in its true sense. 



THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 249 



CHAPTER IX. 

ECCLESIASTICAL COUNCILS: THEIR POWERS AND DUTIES. 

IT is with much diffidence that we take up the study of the question of 
ecclesiastical councils, as they relate to Baptist church government. In 
doiug so I wish to confine myself to my own proper task, and not usurp the 
functions of the ecclesiastical legislator, of the moralist, or of the philan- 
thropist. I feel called upon only to register and expound the practical rules 
based upon the tacit or express consent of the churches, and conformable 
to the dictates of abstract justice, so far as these can be ascertained ; and I 
am not entitled to impair the simple treatment of a subject, engrossing 
enough in itself, by speculations on a remote future of Baptist churches, or 
even by benevolently suggesting reforms for the immediate present. 

Indeed the literature of Baptists upon this subject is so meager that we 
are almost left without authority to guide us. The recent work, however, 
of the Rev. Dr. Hiscox, entitled "A New Baptist Church Directory," 
where this subject is mentioned, is the only work wherein we find the subject 
treated methodically ; and I am glad to say that in one chapter in his book 
upon the subject of councils the author has exercised the self-restraint here 
commended. Whereas, on the contrary, those outside of the Baptists have 
aU but universally assumed the character of legislators as well as commen- 
tators. Nor have they even confined themselves to the moderate course of 
hinting at what, in their opinion, the law of the gospel ought to be, while 
explaining what it actually is. Their views of what the law is have been 
largely colored by what they have wished the law to be, and, too often, by 
what they have conceived the interests of their own systems of church gov- 
ernment demanded it should be. They have given definiteness and preci- 
sion to principles which are, as yet, of most fluctuating authority, and are 
without Scriptural warrant. The most that can be said is that they have 
imparted clearness and simplicity to rules the true import of which can only 
be understood by laying side by side a long series of treatises, speculations 
and desultory utterances of the church fathers, which is nothing more than 
the traditional assumptions of egotistic self-interest. The wide departures of 
these ecclesiastical legislators from true apostolic church government has 
been one of the causes which has led Baptists to discredit councils as a 
system of actually binding rules. Thus it has come about that neither the 
subject of the law of councils, as it is, nor that of the law as it ought to be 
made, has been treated adequately; and when those who profess to be 
teachers of the law acknowledge themselves uncertain as to the existence of 
any rules at all wholly out of the region of further debate, there might be 



250 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

an excuse for those who were interested in prolonging a period of uncer- 
tainty and confusion in declaring there was no law at all regulating these 
tribunals. 

Hence Baptists have been slow to attribute to councils much importance, 
and much less authority, over the churches. But, nevertheless, it would 
seem eminently proper to lay down some of the principles that should 
govern councils, and to show the exact bounds and limits of their jurisdic- 
tion. In doing this it would be well to lay this down as an axiomatical 
truth ; that in Baptist church government nothing is allowable, or of any 
binding authority, but what was done and reduced to examples and practice 
in the primitive times of the churches by the apostles, or what is reasonably 
deducible therefrom without doing violence to the law of the gospel. In 
confining ourselves to the Scriptures we find but one example of a council 
laid down for our guidance— that mentioned in the fifteenth chapter of the 
Acts. Whatsoever in matters of church government is commanded or for- 
bidden by God in his word is accordingly a duty or a sin by divine right 
and example. Whatsoever that council did, and whatever powers and 
authority it exercised, we may likewise do, as by a divine commandment 
from God. The council which met at Jerusalem was not a standing body 
organized for government and rule over the churches. There is no record 
of its ever having met again, but on similar occasions and for like purposes 
another might be called. It exercised no ecclesiastical authority. Its 
deliberations were about matters of difference which had divided the 
disciples, and their findings were alone advisory and not mandatory. Their 
mission was ministerial and not magisterial. But the question will be, what 
are the principles deducible from the only example given of any council 
the record of which is laid down in the Scriptures ? 

Every Baptist church has the inalienable right, and the absolute necessity 
is laid upon it to complete and preserve itself as an orthodox church in 
accordance with the orthodox faith and ancient practice and usage of the 
churches, independent of any foreign or other jurisdiction. No true and 
loyal church can govern its own actions and obstinately take to itself a 
private opinion, as to doctrine, according to its discretion, contrary to the 
standards of belief erected by the churches, but every church is tied down 
to do and believe according to that will only, which, once for all, is con- 
formable to, and involved in, the will of the whole denomination of which it 
is a part. For Peter says : Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scrip- 
ture is of any private interpretation. This is the only means which we 
have of preserving ourselves as Baptists, and keeping pure the gospel of 
Christ. We are preserved and held together as a denomination, in the unity 
of the faith, by an implied covenant to stand to and abide by these standards 
of belief. But it often happens that this covenant alone is not suflScient 
security for keeping the doctrine pure without some restraint to compel 
obedience, by a declaration of non-fellowship, by the fear of which the 
churches may be induced both to keep the peace, and preserve the doctrine, 
once delivered to the saints. The only tribunal known to the Scriptures 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 251 

charged with the duty of inquiring into the true faith, or practice of the 
churclies, is a council ; which is nothing else but an assembly of brethren, 
large or small, mutually chosen by the contending parties in a divided 
church, to deliberate concerning something common to them all. 

Whether ecclesiastical councils have any authoritative jurisdiction in 
cases of heresy is a question of vast moment in church government. In the 
Episcopal and Presbyterian forms of church government councils are made 
standing bodies, entrusted with powers of government and control over the 
local churches. The churches surrender unto these conferences and synods 
the right, not only of control, but entrusts them with full legislative powers 
to make laws for their government. Unto the churches is given the right 
of appeal from the decision of the local churches, that they may review, ' 
affirm, or reverse their own decisions. In other words, their independency 
is completely destroyed, thus subverting and overthrowing the apostolic form 
of church polity. They thus resolve themselves into a body politic and 
claim for it the rights which Christ gave to the local churches, in the 
management of their own internal affairs. Not so in Baptist church polity. 
All the churches in the world might add their advice to a local church, with 
a reverential admonition, but they cannot assume a power over it, for that 
Christ has given to a local church, as it is a church of Christ. The 
adherents to Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism contend that the power of 
government is in their respective councils, aside from and outside of the 
local churches, because they insist that these bodies are themselves churches, 
and that the local organic assembly is an imperfect church. Whereas there 
is not one place of Scripture in the New Testament that does so much as call 
a council, a conference or a presbytery over many churches, a church. A 
church may be imperfect in many respects, wherein they need counsel and 
advice, and so may all other forms of government. 

As Baptists we acknowledge occasional councils, to be chosen and agreed 
upon by the opposite contending factions in a divided church, as the churches 
have occasional need to refer cases of difference to them for settlement. 
There are but two occasions when the assistance of councils can be called 
for ; One is where a false doctrine has crept into the churches, to settle which 
a council may be convened by the churches immediately interested, to pass 
upon the false doctrine taught ; the other instance is when a church is 
divided over a question of discipline, and upon a call of the church thus 
divided, a council may be convened to assist the church in settling the same. 
In all cases of maladministration, as to doctrine, or as to a supposed unjust 
proceeding, when discipline or excommunication is threatened, we acknow- 
ledge complaints may be made to other churches ; and these counsellors 
when met with the divided church in council may judge of, and pass upon, 
the matters in controversy, giving only their judgment of a fact done, to be 
referred back to the church calling the council for the enforcement of their 
decision. Baptists have never recognized the right of a sister church or 
churches, in the first instance, to call a council to pass upon the conduct of 
churches, unless called upon by the contending factions in a divided church. 



252 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

To do so would be to surrender churcli independency, and to erect a judica- 
tory to lord it over a free church of Christ. If a church should destroy 
itself by the teaching of a false doctrine, to -which all Baptist churches could 
not give their assent, and the church thus corrupted should be unwilling to 
call a council, the district association with which such a church affiliates, 
according to custom, would have a right to pass upon the right of such a 
church to a seat in the body and to declare non-communion and non-fellow- 
ship with them, until they righted themselves in the opinion of the denomina- 
tion ; but as an original proposition sister churches can have no right to erect 
a council to try a church for any offence, and to undertake to excommuni- 
cate it from the denomination. 

* Now, we have a divine example in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of 
the Apostles for the calling of a council, without which Baptists would have 
no authority whatever for their use. It is proper to say that from the study 
of the nature of this council of the chief men among the brethren, they 
assumed not the authority to make laws as such. What was said and done 
in that council was no more laws than the precepts. Repent ye, be baptised, 
keep my commandments, follow me; which are not laws in the judicial sense 
of that word, but invitations and exhortations ; much less are the doings of 
latter-day councils to be taken as laws, though what they might decree be 
eminently correct and Scriptural, unless the council had legislative authority 
given it which can be exercised only by warrant of the Scripture itself. 
But it cannot be denied that this example at Jerusalem was given to be 
followed as a divine pattern, and whatever was done then, no more and no 
less, may be imitated by the churches of this day. Taking this example 
for authority, we conclude that these tribunals when properly called and 
guarded have the right to inquire whether opinions taught are heretical and 
to denounce them as dangerous to the peace and order of the denomination. 
At least this council which met at Antioch after full and free discussion put 
the seal of condemnation upon certain practices that had crept into the 
church which threatened the purity of their faith and practice. 

The decree of the council at Jerusalem passed in the name of the Holy 
Spirit, and was written by men confessedly inspired, and it must be remem- 
bered that it confirmed only what inspired men had taught before. The 
findings of this council w^ere authoritative and apostolical, and were made a 
matter of Scriptural record, and they are as binding upon us as any other 
part of the record, because by covenant we have made them the rule of our 
faith. These decisions were certainly binding upon the church at Antioch 
by reason of their entering into the council, and the high character of those 
who participated therein. As to the binding authority of subsequent 
councils, such have a right to meet after the example of the one at Jerusalem, 
and to agree upon what doctrine they should teach, and they, as individuals, 
would be obliged by their entrance into it, to teach the doctrine therein 
agreed to be taught, but not that all churches should be obliged to observe 
what they taught. For they might deliberate what each of them should 
teach, but they would have no power to deliberate what others should do, 



OR, THE COMMOJ^" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 253 

unless God had given them legislative power, which no church has. 
Besides there is no organic union between them with power to enforce the 
observance of their decrees, for such decisions would have no more binding 
force than the wholesome advice of otlier eminent men belonging to the 
communion, and might be received as their individual interpretation of the 
particular article of faith in question. If the trial of an heretic, or a 
question of discipline were committed by a church to the deliberations of a 
council, chosen from the churches by the mutual consent of the party to be 
tried, such council might find the facts, but would have no authority to 
make a final decision of the case, or to pass upon the guilt of the accused 
without authority of the church to do so, and that with the consent of the 
party on trial. Heresy, or no heresy, excommunication, or no excommuni- 
cation, in the last resort, like all other ecclesiastical questions, must be decided 
by the sovereign church, which if just and correct, and if the decree is 
passed in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and in the name of the 
Holy Spirit it is the authentic law of that case, to be followed in the future, 
should occasion arise. In all such cases the church has power to receive and 
approve or reject the decision of the council ; for who should be judge 
whether his trustee or deputy acts well, and according to the trust reposed 
in him, but he who deputes him, and must by having deputed him, have still 
a power to discard him when he fails in his trust. Where a palpable viola- 
tion of the trust reposed in them is evident, let a new council be called, 
which is the best safety against a division in the church, and the most 
probable means to hinder it ; for a division being an opposition, not always 
to persons, but to church authority, which is founded only in the very con- 
stitution and laws of the church ; and those, whoever they may be, who by 
force break through, and by force justify their violation of them, are truly 
and properly rebels against ecclesiastical government; for then men, by 
entering into a church of Christ, have thereby excluded force, and intro- 
duced laws for the preservation of peace and unity amongst themselves. 

From the clearest lights before us, taking the example of the council at 
Jerusalem as an example, and the custom and usage of Baptist churches 
based upon that example, it is not Scriptual that churches should be sent to 
for counsellors, leaving to them solely the question as to whom they shall 
send, but some particular person, noted for his wisdom and piety, mutually 
agreed upon between the parties at controversy, should be singled out and 
asked for to convene in council. If it were left to the church sent to for 
counsellors to say who should be chosen regardless of the consent of the 
party to be tried, great injustice might be done by the choice of counsellors 
unfriendly to the accused or the party prosecuting the case, and thus a 
council might be thrust upon the church who had already pre-judged the 
case. Neither is it necessary or customary to confine the parties to the 
nearest sister churches, for it not unfrequently happens that the nearest neigh- 
boring churches are themselves disturbed by the troubles agitating the church 
calling the council, and in that event any decision they might make would 
have but little influence in the settlement of ecclesiastical questions. For 



254 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

every decision of a council is to pass under review by every particular church 
in the denomination, and accepted or rejected according to the best judg- 
ment of that church, and the intrinsic fairness and impartiality with which 
it was rendered, as the decision of every council carries with it as much 
authority as there is force in the reason for that decision, the force being 
limited by the reasonableness of itself, because it has no force unless it be 
reasonable and just. Any church that would so far forget itself as to select, 
in a shrewd political fashion, the material for its own construction, and pack 
a council to deliver a decision at the dictation of a dominant majority, may 
expect that a just and ever-watchful denomination will eschew its decision, 
and put the seal of condemnation upon its adjudications. 

Councils should be chosen in all cases when a church wants either light or 
peace, ordination, dismission or deposition of ministers, all troublesome 
cases of discipline, dissensions or other difficulties in a church which threaten 
to rend the church, which it is itself unable, or indisposed to settle, and in 
general, all those occasions which require the advice, or concurrent action of 
more churches than one to settle satisfactorily. It is for the whole body of 
a church to admonish or to censure, but for the purposes of counsel and advice 
in all difficult cases it devolves upon the few to be agreed upon by the con- 
tending parties, but those who are sent sit in council only by virtue of their 
delegation from their respective chui'ches. Their power is merely advisory, 
nor can they volunteer that service. They cannot come till they are asked 
for, and sent, nor extend their inquiries beyond the point submitted, and 
their advice may be regarded or not, as may seem best to the parties asking, 
unless there is an express agreement so to observe the award. But all 
parties should hold themselves in readiness to follow such counsel having 
asked it, so far as it is founded upon the word of God, as in the multitude of 
councillors there is safety. It must be remembered that neither a council nor 
a presbytery assembled as such can install a minister into his office, nor put 
him out of it, without the consent and co-operation of the church. 

It is not every controversy, whether of doctrine orof discipline, that should 
be referred to the decision of a council, for the church itself is said to be the 
ground and 2^ill(ir of the truth, and as such is perfectly competent to preserve 
and perpetuate the truth. If the controversy be such a one as is confined 
to the brethren at variance, and has not spread discord among the mass of 
the membership, the church can safely try the issue without danger of injury 
to either party. But sometimes, and not unfrequently, a church becomes 
so divided in sentiment, and so rent in twain over a controversy that the 
church itself is utterly unfit to entertain and try the cause. The factions in 
a church may become so angry over a dispute between brethren that they 
are thereby totally disqualified from doing justice to themselves, and common 
humanity, and the dictates of natural equity and justice require that the 
whole matter be relegated to the judicature of a body of councillors to be 
mutually agreed upon. To do otherwise would be to virtually make the 
parties to a controversy judges in their own cause, who, as it were, are bribed 
by their own interests, which is clearly against the law of nature and the 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 255 

spirit of the Scriptures, and would leave the good and innocent with no 
defense against the unjust. Even a committee drawn from among them- 
selves to investigate, would simply reflect their own turbulent insubordina- 
tion. Hence we ought not to be compelled to look to the Scriptures in such 
cases for a rule authorizing the call of a council, but custom and reason 
should regulate the matter though we had not a divine warrant for it. It is 
a law that concerns the conscience, and a church that so far forgets itself as 
to deny the right of a council, in such cases, to a party, or faction in a 
divided church, violates the Scriptures and breaks a law of nature. For a 
church to charge, arraign and try a party, or a faction in a church, under 
such circumstances, would be but a triumph of revenge, which is contrary 
to justice, and consequently it is against the law of God. This is taking 
away from a prejudiced church the power of oppressing one of its members. 
A councilman thus chosen from the body of another church to try a delin- 
quent feels his responsibility far more distinctly as a councilman than other- 
wise. Let a pious and judicious member of a church, whether a minister or 
a layman, be suddenly singled out, and made a member of a council to 
reflect and resolve for the factions in a divided church, and he will feel the 
diflerence in an instant. Councilmen chosen to sit in judgment upon these 
weighty matters, carefully looking around them, and conscious that they are 
the choice of the accused and the accusers, and that they will have to give 
an account to themselves and to the churches at large, are not easily swayed 
from the path of rectitude and the path of duty. It is the only means 
pointed out in the law of the gospel to temper the rashness of a divided 
church, and to overcome the obstinancy of those who divide them. 

It is, therefore, a customary law of the churches, long since recognized, 
that in every controversy in a divided church, either faction not being will- 
ing to risk the church in its divided condition, that the parties thereto ought 
mutually to agree upon a council, which they both trust, and mutually con- 
sent to stand to the sentence it shall render therein, to be chosen from among 
members of impartial churches It is indispensably necessary that such a 
council must be impartial and trusted by the parties to the controversy. 
They ought not to be concerned in the settlement of the controversy they 
are called upon to end, for in that case they are themselves parties, and 
ought for the same reason to be judged by another. Certainly they ought 
not to make any promise with either party to pronounce a sentence for the 
one more than for the other. For they violate a most sacred law, if for 
favor, or hatred to either party, they give other sentence than that which is 
just and right. No man ought to accept the position of counsellor, and 
make himself judge in any controversy between others, unless there is a per- 
fect consent and agreement thereto, as no man ought to intrude his counsel 
and advice upon any one that declares himself unwilling to hear it, or has 
just cause to suspect the good intentions of the counsellor. In matters of 
such moment and in order to enable the council to act intelligently, and to 
cut off* every pretext of which equivocation might make a handle, it is neces- 
sary that there be articles mutually agreed upon beforehand by the parties^ 



256 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

precisely specifying the subject in dispute, the respective and opposite pre- 
tensions of the parties, in the form of charges and specifications, and the de- 
mauds of the one and the objections of the other. These should constitute 
the whole of what is submitted to the decision of the council, and upon these 
points alone the parties should propose to abide their judgment. The deci- 
sion of every impartial council ought by all means to be unanimous. But 
if this is impossible, and where not otherwise provided in the article of refer- 
ence, if there be an uneven number of counsellors the decision of the ma- 
jority is conclusive. If there be only two or any other even number, and 
they are evenly divided in sentiment, they cannot call in a third, as umpire, 
without the consent of all parties concerned. The council is dissolved by 
the resignation of any one of the referees. A decision once formally de- 
livered cannot be reconsidered without a new agreement, for when it is 
delivered the council is at an end. The council do not guarantee the execu- 
tion of their award, and have no power to enforce it. The decision is 
referred to the church, which, by previous agreement, is adopted, and by 
which the disputants have consented to abide, and they are bound to do so, 
except in cases where the award is obtained by collusion, or is not confined 
within the limits of the submission. If the award falls short of, or exceeds 
these precise bounds, and pretends to decide upon other points than those 
submitted to them, their decision is in no respect binding. 

Even if it were lawful for one church to intermeddle with the afiairs of 
another through the medium of a council there are some matters of so sacred 
a nature as will not admit of being submitted to a council. It is where a 
church believes that the action, or menaced action of another church is such 
as seriously to menace its own independence, or even its ecclesiastical exist- 
ence ; or it believes such action is hostile or fatal to some policy not sound- 
ing in heresy which it has, for reasons sufiicient to itself, deliberately adopted 
and long perseveringly adhered to ; or believes some act of another church, 
or some imputation cast on itself, to be injurious to what it designates as its 
own ecclesiastical dignity and honor. In respect to these and like cases, it 
is expected that when once it is believed that the existence, independence or 
the honor and dignity of the church is really involved, no church could ever 
be expected to submit to the judgment of any tribunal, however constituted ; 
and even if it were, the matters in dispute are usually too delicate and 
intangible even to be made matters of judicial references, and to enable 
any one church to trust itself implicitly to the integrity and justice of any 
one or all the rest. 

Although two brethren, and with them the church, are divided into oppo- 
site parties, each contending for principles diametrically contrary to each 
other, and although one of the parties is to blame in breaking the unity and 
peace of the church, they are not the less divided in fact. Besides who shall 
rashly judge them, inasmuch as both parties assert the right of judgment ? 
Both must be considered by the council as being candid and sincere in their 
intentions, and in a doubtful case it ought still to be held as uncertain which 
side, is in the right, and the cause of both to be considered just, at least, as 



I 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 257 

to external effects, until every remedy has been exhausted for the decision 
of the dispute. Custom, founded upon the example of the apostolic churches, 
has wisely arranged it, for a council of discreet, trusted and impartial breth- 
ren to stand above and aloof from the two parties, and being removed be- 
yond the circle of interests within which they move, to hear and judge 
impartially between the two. This body of discreet brethren, where there 
is room for the smallest doubt, ought to suppose that each party has equal 
rights ; that the act of the party that has committed the injury may have 
proceeded from error, and not from a general contempt of the laws of the 
gospel and with intent to injure. 

Investigations by councils should always be entered into under the sup- 
position that church quarrels cannot be just on both sides. One party 
claims a right, or a privilege, the other disputes it; the one complains of an 
injury ; the other denies having done it. They ought to be considered as 
two individuals disputing about the truth of a proposition, but it is impossi- 
ble that two conflicting sentiments should be true at the same time. In 
doubtfid cases, where the matters in dispute are uncertain, obscure and dis- 
putable, all that a council can be reasonably expected to do, is to hear all 
the evidence from both parties, and allow the question to be fully discussed, 
as Peter and the other apostles discussed the questions that agitated the 
church at Antioch, and if it is impossible fully to clear it up to the entire 
satisfaction of both sides, to make a decision in a manner the most just and 
Scriptural in the sight of God, and in a manner most conducive to the best 
interest of the whole church. In making their decision they ought to 
rejoice in the opportunity of indulging in the pleasure which they derive 
from doing good, and thereby gratify their love of justice and truth. They 
ought not to consult their own gratification, or suffer themselves to be guided 
by their private inclinations. All their actions ought to be directed to the 
greatest advantage of the church, combined with the general interest of the 
Y/hole denomination with which they are inseparably connected by the ties 
of brotherly love. 

In the adjustment of troubles, whether they be doctrinal or disciplinary, 
in a divided church, a council should take care that they do no violence to 
the laws of Christ, nor to the fundamental principles of Baptist church gov- 
ernment, and these laws ought to be observed by both parties in every 
dispute. K it be necessary and proper to observe these laws in a state of 
peace, it becomes equally and even more necessary in the unhappy circum- 
stance of two disturbed parties lacerating a church of Christ. When we 
speak of an amicable adjustment of a church trouble by a council it must 
not be understood that either Bible or Baptist principles should be sacrificed 
even for the sake of peace. But that party which has right and principle 
on its side, ought not to neglect those methods of conciliation, which without 
compromising with error, may induce erring brethren to listen to reason. 
That party which is in the right cannot refuse, in some degree, to forget 
itself with respect to interests that are not essential, and to make some 
sacrifices, in order to assist other persons, especially for the greater benefit 
17 



25B A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

of the denominational tranquillity. All parties in trials of this nature 
ought to feel themselves invited hy their own advantage, by their own safety, 
each being conscious of the rectitude of their own conduct to make these 
generous sacrifices ; for the good of each is intimately connected with the 
denominational happiness. Every one owes this much to the peace and 
well-being of his church and the cause of Christ, to show himself open to 
every mode of reconciliation, in questions relating to interests which are 
neither essential nor of great importance. K he expose himself to the loss 
of something, by amicable adjustment, he ought to be sensible what are some 
of the evils and calamities of a church division, and to consider that the 
unity and peace of the church and denomination is well worth a small sacri- 
fice, and the council that does not share in these laudable sentiments, and 
work to these beneficent ends, fails in its mission and loses an opportunity of 
doing good to the cause of Christ. 

There is absolutely no right of appeal from the decision of a church, or 
from the determination of a council called by a church, no examples of 
which can be found in the history of the apostolic churches, whether it be 
in doctrine or manners. For the law says: Tell it unto the church; but if 
he neglect to hear the church let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a 
publican. The right of appeal to any body of men outside of a local 
church is denied. There is involved in the judicial meaning of the word 
appeal the right to hear, and the power to reverse and render null and void 
the sentence of a lower, and an inferior court, which has no place in Baptist 
church jurisprudence. There is no tribunal above a church that has 
power to review and reverse the acts of a sovereign church in the manage- 
ment of its own internal affairs. As far as Baptists have ever gone in this 
direction, is when an application has been made to a sister church by an 
excommunicated man for fellowship in that church for them to receive him 
should they believe him to have been unjustly cast out, although he comes 
without the usual credentials, and by so doing they only declare the sentence 
of excommunication unjust. The church that excommunicates may reverse 
its own act, or the excommunicated may appeal to the church from which 
he was cast out for a rehearing. The power to reverse a sentence of a 
church, in the true acceptation of that term, means an act of the same kind 
of the ecclesiastical power that gave the sentence. It means the same kind 
of power to make it void, that established it. Neither a sister church nor a 
council has any power over a church even in case of wrong to revoke it 
as such. 

But suppose a church is divided in fiict over a question of doctrine or 
discipline, and each party honestly believes they are in the right, and the 
majority of the church, wherein such a condition exists, should obstinately 
refuse, over the objection of the minority, to call for a council to investigate 
the differences according to the law and custom of the churches, would it be 
lawful for the minority to call an ex-parte council to investigate the matters 
at issue, either before or after excommunication ? This is a practical ques- 
tion, and one that often confronts the churches. In its solution we might 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 259 

lay this down as a self-evident proposition : Wherever there is a wrong 
there is a just remedy, that all parties should be allowed to resort to, as a 
means against oppression. If the church refuse to call a council, the 
agrieved minority may do it without them by giving due notice of what is 
done, and inviting them to participate therein. Such a council should not, 
however, be packed to find a certain way, but should be chosen with the 
utmost caution, and if, when convened, they should find the aggrieved persons 
to have suffered palpable injury, they should endeavour in a reverential way 
to convince the church. If the church should obstinately refuse to hear the 
council, it is perfectly proper and right for them to advise that the parties be 
admitted to some other church, and thus to communion with them aU. If it 
be ^a^vful for a church to receive an excommunicated man into its fellowship 
without the advice of such a council, which by usage is often done, in cases 
of wrong and oppression, it would certainly be more prudent and cautious to 
do so upon the recommendation of a judicious council impartially selected It 
is not an exercise, or an attempt to exercise any jurisdiction over the churches, 
but it is the only way known in which lawful testimony might be established 
against oppression and maladministration in any particular church, especially 
in a system where the right of appeal is denied. This right to ask for a coun- 
cil is inherent in the minority before or after trial, or excommunication 
where the church refuses to join with them in the call for a council. But, 
on the other hand, should the minority refuse to ask for a council, or refuse 
to join in the call for one, then it devolves upon the church to proceed to 
try the case in the usual way and need not call a council for that purpose. 

Those bodies nearest the churches, generally bounded by county or district 
lines, called in our polity, associations, in case of maladministration, dis- 
order, or heresy, on the part of a church within the association, may with- 
draw fellowship from, and refuse communion with the offending church, but 
not to presume to excommunicate or to unchurch them, or to shut up their 
meetings, and thereby declare them to be as heathens and publicans. It 
might be said of this kind of government, that it is no government at all, 
because the power to excommunicate is wanting. That is exactly what 
Baptists have ever contended for ; that it is a government without ecclesias- 
tical power to hind or to loose, and cannot lay a feather's weight upon the 
local churches, except to say, that by reason of any disorders apparent in 
them, they refuse to associate with them, until such disorders are removed, 
and they right themselves in the eyes of the denomination. If a church in 
the use of its legitimate authority should cast a man out of the church, and 
a council or association were to undertake to restore him to the church he 
was cast out of, then they must have power to compel that church to receive 
him back again. In cases like this the whole church, and its officers, would 
be subjects to be dealt with by these bodies. 

There is neither necessity or efficacy in appeals from a sentence already 
rendered by a church, or a council, and in no instance can a case be taken 
out of the hands of a local church by making an appeal after sentence 
given, thus acknowledging a superior power in the body appealed unto. For 



260 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJPvCH JURISPRUDEKCE ; 

in every sentence rendered by a church there are two parts to it, one out- 
ward and external, that the church performs, which is excommunication, 
and the other, inward, which God accompanies the sentence with. And if the 
sentence were formerly no more than a formal casting the delinquent out of 
the outward communion of the church on earth, then a greater power in 
earth might have power to rescind their decision, and restore him to com- 
munion, and thus oblige the church to live and commune with a man whom 
they deem as an heathen man and a publican. But if the sentence be just 
there is a further judicial act annexed to it, which is binding in Heaven : 
For the Scriptures say : Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in 
Heaven, which must be supposed to be such a judicial act of God as cannot 
be rescinded, and can certainly never be rescinded in Heaven, till he 
repents. Hence the local church, which is the first subject of this ecclesias- 
tical power of ex-communication as coming from Christ, and he is supposed 
to have registered the sentence in Heaven ; and if it were possible that there 
should be a superior power, of the same kind on earth, to rescind the sen- 
tence, or unbind in Heaven, there would be a conflict of jurisdiction unre- 
concilable with any intelligent system of government, either in earth or in 
Heaven ; for God is not the author of confusion. Should the church ex- 
clude on earth and God saves in Heaven she has wrongfully used her jpower. 
If councils or associations were granted power to review and reverse the 
sentence of a local church, they would be presumed to have one key to un- 
loose what the key of the church and the key in Heaven had already 
locked and bound. It cannot be supposed that all sentences rendered in a 
church are unjust and wrong, and, therefore, appeals to councils and associa- 
tions should be allowed. On the other hand, it is rather to be judged that 
the local church has proceeded rightly than to side with the delinquent 
party. And whether the sentence be just, or unjust, it is the power and 
duty of the church to declare it so, according to its best judgment, and cer- 
tainly it is no part of the business of a council or association to undertake 
to rescind it. For, if it be just, no sentence on earth can reverse God's act 
upon that sentence, for it is bound in Heaven, and man cannot alter God's 
act ; and if it be unjust, there need be no power to reverse it, but any other 
sister church, being independent and sovereign in itself, upon application to 
it for membership, can, at their own risk, receive the party unto its fellow- 
ship, and thereby declare the excommunication to be unjust, and, therefore, 
void, and so hold the brother as if he had never been excommunicated. 
For this much is only claimed in courts of civil and criminal judicature, as 
no superior court has power to rescind the decision of another, but by its 
own act the sentence of the other court is made void, without any act of 
revocation by the other. Thus, if one sister church, in the exercise of its 
power and wisdom, should hold the act of discipline unjust, they have no 
power to compel the other church to reverse their decision, but simply 
holds it unjust without their consent, for one church is just as sovereign as 
the other. This is the only way known in which testimony may be borne 
against mal-administration in a church. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 261 

"When we speak, however, of one church receiving an excommunicated 
member of another church, we mean the abstract right to do so, but not 
their duty. In all questions not involving the conscience and faith of a 
man, every one should submit to the rightful authority of the church, and 
no other church ought to interfere by receiving into their fellowship the ex- 
cluded member, lest they incur the denomiuaLional displeasure. But it has 
long since been a custom among Baptist churches that in all questions of 
conscieuce a man should be permitted to go elsewhere for membership, pro- 
vided he can find a church willing to receive him as upon a profession of his 
faith, although he may be condemned for so doing. The decision of no 
church or council is infallible. For the churches since the apostles' times 
have not been without their mistakes and shortcomings, who, when they are 
somewhat evenly divided, on a grave question concerning the w^hole denom- 
ination, they ought never to allow the opposite party to be their judge, 
and, therefore, it cannot be supposed that Christ should have appointed one 
faction to judge the other, who must always be considered to be a party at 
interest, and Avill never be accepted by the other, unless Christ had given 
infallibility to that one part, and the other part knew it. To the apostles, 
in the council at Jerusalem, he did give such infallibility, and they were the 
fountains of truth, but when they were gone the only way that remained 
was to see what they left, and that every one should conform to the exam- 
ples they left us. No man, or company of men, was charged with the right 
to judge them except by their own consent ; every council to inquire into 
their conduct was to be erected by their own consent, and all cases submitted 
to them before any judgment was rendered by the church and before the 
outward mode of the decision of the church was attempted to be carried 
into execution. 

If there had been a necessity for the erection of an ecclesiastical high court 
to which appeals might be made, in the times of the apostles, a set and con- 
stant judicatory, then Christ would have appointed one as he did in the local 
churches. If Christ had designated this form of church government he 
would doubtless have left authority for them in the \yord of God, and set 
proper bounds to its jurisdiction. And it cannot be said that there were not 
enough of churches in those days for such a government to be set up, for the 
apostles lived to see many large churches erected in a province, as well as in 
cities, as in Judea, in Asia and in Crete. There was material for the mould- 
ing and organizing the churches into these ecclesiastical bodies. Had this 
been the plan of government, these apostles would have designed and planned 
this government to serve as examples to be imitated by us, after they should 
have passed away. And it is certainly strange that in the case of the spread- 
ing of errors and heresies, they should not write to these bodies as gathered 
into councils as having the standing power to prevent and suppress them, if 
such assemblies armed with coercive power had been then in existence as 
they are now in these systems of government. But on the contrary the 
apostles, when they discovered great disorders, many of them doctrinal, yet 
they wrote only to the local churches, as they were standing and fixed bodies 



262 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

for government and reproof, and not to standing councils. Nowhere are 
the churches in a province called a church, but churches in the plural. 

For a council or association to undertake to dissolve a church's external 
state, as to all ordinances and worship is a matter so far above excommunica- 
tion of single persons by a local church though they should be many, that it 
is Christ's prerogative to do it. This is evident by the analogy of the prin- 
ciples of civil governments. 

To dissolve an incorporated town, to call in and take away its charter and 
privileges as a government, belongs to the supreme power in the State ; and 
though judges and others may deal with persons in the incorporation, yet 
the incorporation itself depends upon the supreme power. Christ in Heaven 
speaking through John the revelator makes it his prerogative to remove the 
candlestick of the church at Ephesus. Repent, and do the first works ; or 
else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his 
place. Now it is agreed by every one that the candlestick was their church 
state, for in another place it is said : And the seven candlesticks which thou 
sawest are the seven churches. And, therefore, he speaks not of them as they 
were members of the universal church, but of them, as they were candle- 
sticks artificially formed into an organic church. 

It is Christ's prerogative alone to build and erect a church through the 
medium and help of a common council and a company whom he has re- 
deemed by his precious blood, without the intervention of any ministerial 
power, as deriving authority from them ; therefore, to dissolve that com- 
munion and fellowship, and the use thereof, belongs only to him. Churches 
to be instituted may and ought to have, and under Baptist church govern- 
ment do have, the direction and assistance of a council from neighboring 
sister churches because a new sister is to be added to and associated with 
them ; but they receive no power from them to become a church. It was 
not even the intervention of the apostles' power that constituted churches, 
further than they were instrumental in converting materials for churches to 
be made out of, and as they directed and taught them to become churches 
unto Christ, teaching them to do whatsoever Christ had commanded them. 
But nowhere in the Scriptures do we read that an assembly of men, thus 
organized, received their church state from any ministerial act. We read 
that they ordained elders, but not that they ordained churches. And min- 
isters could never have ordained elders but for the call and election by the 
churches as in the cases of Paul, Barnabas and Matthias. 

It is a great error to contend about the apostolic succession of ministers 
and churches, and to suppose that should either be lost there should come 
upon earth apostles to make ministers and churches again. Whereas if all 
true ministers and churches should become extinct, by reason of antichrist, 
yet if there be two or three true believers alive, and they have the Holy 
Scriptures, those writings would serve as authority, and would be a complete 
charter to them to become a church, and to choose ministers 'and then to 
ordain them, as if the apostles were alive. Moses was not the builder of tlie 
church under the Jewish economy, but God immediately did it. The law 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 263 

says: For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses; inasmuch as 
he who hath builded the house hath more honor than the house. For every 
house is builded by some man, but he that built all things is God. Now if 
Christ has builded the churches who can tear them down ? If all the coun- 
cils in the world were to undertake to demolish it, it is of no avail, for it is 
the prerogative of Christ alone to remove the candlestick when it has de- 
parted from the faith and fallen into errors. If councils were to undertake 
to excommunicate an heretical church, its fundamental church state would 
not thereby be dissolved, as the character of an erring brother, or of a min- 
ister, is not so defaced when excommunicated, but that if they repent again 
they remain a brother and a minister, without a new baptism and a new 
ordination. So that if Christ were to remove the candlestick and unchurch 
any church, if they repent their church state would be restored. All that 
sister churches can do is to admonish them by refusiug to associate and com- 
mune with them, till they repent and return to the true faith and practice. 
The right to judge of heresy, what it is, and how it shall be treated was 
never delegated by the apostles to any council or other body of men outside 
of the church. In post-apostolic systems this right has been assumed by 
councils, conferences and general assemblies. But, as it has been shown 
heretofore, a church is not every company of Christians gathered together 
in any and every way, but it is an assembly of organic baptised believers 
united by covenant, one with another, into an organized church under an 
express charter emanating from Christ, and must be governed by a certain 
authority delegated by Him. Wherefore a church has no domicile in any 
other assembly, unless in that in which the power of the membership is 
supreme, and this supreme authority only can take cognizance of heresy. It 
has never been the custom among Baptists to call a general council to settle 
questions of doctrine or practice. If heresy should spring up in a Baptist 
church as it did at Antioch, so as to disturb the peace of the church, or 
that of the denomination, it would be lawful for the contending parties in 
the divided church to call a council of mutual friends, discreet and impartial 
brethren, to meet with the church and investigate the question, and advise 
the church as to what should be done in the premises. In no instance could 
the council take cognizance of the matters in issue without this invitation ; 
neither could they pass judgment in and of themselves unless requested so to 
do by the church with the advice and consent of the parties calling the 
council ; and certainly in no case could a councilexecutetheir own judgment 
for to censure, to admonish or to excommunicate belongs to the church alone. 
The great difference which exists between a case tried before a church and a 
council, is, that when the church tries the offense it passes upon the guilt of 
the offender and at the same time inflicts the discipline, while a council only 
finds the facts and. has no power to punish. Their connection with the case 
terminates and that of the church commences, unless the church in calling 
the council expressly empowers it to pass upon the guilt of the offender and 
to say, in the case of a minister, whether, in their judgment, he should be 
deprived of his official rank and deposed from the ministry, and whether in 



264 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

the future he shall be declared by his church incapable of officiating in his 
ministerial office. In that event the council is ])y mutual consent trans- 
formed into a jury, the church still retaining its function as a magistrate ; 
the church is always called upon to classify and to punish the offender. The 
judgment of the council as to the guilt of the offender becomes a judicial one 
instead of advisory. When the church retains the right, as belonging to 
itself, to inflict the discipHne after the findings of the council, the discipline 
is the consequence of the finding by the council and is no part of the finding 
itself. This full and unHmited power should be very seldom given to coun- 
cils, and certaiidy never without the concurrence and free consent of both 
the church and the accused. For when a church thus decreases its sover- 
eignty, it, on the other hand, puts it in the hands of a council, who unless 
they be composed of the most judicious and pious men, may employ that 
power the more conveniently to oppress and abuse tlie dehnquent. 

It would be a great service in the cause of Baptist church jurisprudence, 
in the maintenance of order and decorum, if it could be definitely ascertained 
and made a matter of general acquiescence, how far, at what times and in what 
way, one church a convention or association is entitled to intrude its good 
offices, for any purpose whatever, on the independence of another church. 
There. are a variety of different questions involved in this matter which are 
often either wholly confused together, or only very imperfectly understood. 
There is, first, the strictly legal question, the answer to which ascertains 
under what conditions one church, through a council or otherwise, may 
encroach on the independence of another church, without committing an 
actual breach of the law of the gospel. The ultimate limits of the right of 
intervention being thus fixed, the next question relates to how far a positive 
legal duty compels one church to intervene in the affairs of another church. 
A further question, of far greater difficulty than the former ones, relates to 
the moral right and duty, and the general ecclesiastical expediency, of inter- 
vention, within the limits within which it is legally permissible. Thus, in 
any actual case which presents itself, it has first to be settled whether the 
circumstances are such as would render intervention allowable, without a 
breach of Baptst principles. Then it has to be determined whether a church 
is under any religious obligation to avail itself of its right to interpose. In 
default of any such legal obligation, as a guide to religious duty, it remains 
to be considered whether it is morally obligatory, just, wise, or expedient for 
a church to avail itself of its moral right, keeping in mind the distinction 
between a right and a duty. 

It is unfortunate that the practice of the churches in the matter of inter- 
vention exhibits, in a peculiar degree, the inherent imperfections which at 
present cling to Baptist Church jurisprudence, namely, the shadowy line 
which separates the legal from the moral right. It will be found that 
Baptists are by no means explicit or ap:reed with one another as to what 
constitutes a just cause for the intermeddling of one church with the affairs 
of another. They have fully recognized that the topic is closely bound up 
with that of the sovereignty and independence of churches, and that the onus 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 265 

of proving a special justification rests upon any church which ventures to in- 
terfere with the internal administration, or with the external action, of 
another church. Often in the history of Baptist church government have 
we seen one church, without the assistance or advice of a council, pass resolu- 
tions of censure against another for some supposed or real grievance, but 
inasmuch as the story of the past, unhappily, rather presents a chronicle of 
lawlessness than a record of scrupulous conformity Tvith orderly rules and 
principles, and encroaching churches have seldom failed to find a plausible 
plea for most barefaced acts of aggression. In many of these cases the inter- 
ference has been countenanced by the impartial opinion of surrounding 
sister churches, and approved by the judgment of the denomination; and 
that, in the practice of the churches, it is found that cases are constantly 
presenting themselves in which, while all sorts of views are held as to the 
time and manner of intervention, the right and moral justice of the inter- 
ference, in certain possible emergencies, is never a matter of controversy at 
all. In treating a subject like this we must take the practice of the 
churches as it is, and not as it ought to be. Hence as a faithful commentator 
I am compelled to recognize exceptions to the broad principle of exemption 
from interference. But it would seem that the time has not yet come for any 
general assent, sufficiently explicit to be the basis of a law, as to the principles 
on which the exceptions are to be based. It is something that it is recog- 
nized, with increasing clearness, that the interference of one church with the 
afildrs of another, especially in matters affecting its rights, must always 
specially justify itself on the ground of exceptional circumstances, and that 
the legal and moral right to do so is, at best, only an exceptional right, 
being, as it is, in derogation of the primary and fundamental right of the in- 
dependence of the churches, which is essential to the very being and nature 
of every Baptist church. This is, undoubtedly, one of the topics on which 
it is desirable that the language of Baptist church jurisprudence should be 
made more clear and unmistakable. In this aspect, the subject has been 
referred to in other places, but only where one church has not invaded the 
rights and privileges of another. In the meantime it appears that the 
practice of the chiu'ches recognizes a legal right of interference by way of 
admonition and censure, but affords a very dim and flickering light for the 
guidance of an honest and law-abiding government, desirous of informing 
itself beforehand as to whether it wiU be legally justified or not in interposing 
in any case which presents itself where one church encroaches upon the pre- 
rogatives of another. But so far as a duty of interfering in the internal 
affairs of a sister church goes, the circumstances in which such a duty could 
arise are becoming rarer every day, as the churches become more enlightened 
and their government better understood. 

Upon these points a study of the council held at Jerusalem sheds no light, 
for whatever was done by the church at Jerusalem that affected the interest of 
the church at Antioch was by the tacit cousont of both. But with respect 
to the interference of the other sort, that is, intervention in a subsisting 
quarrel between two or more Baptist churches, the right to do so is not by 



266 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPEUDENCE ; 

any means given in the law of the gospel, and certainty nothing of the kind 
was done in the example of the mutual council at Jerusalem which gives 
the right to intervene in all pacific cases, and for pacific purposes, rather than 
for hostile purposes, and in cases where their good offices are unsought. It 
is, however, not with strictly legal questions, so far as these can be said to 
exist, but with what may be called moral questions, that the difficulties 
attaching to intervention are really concerned. Assuming one church is 
legally entitled to intervene, either in the internal affairs of another church, 
or in a dispute between two churches, and yet is not legally bound to inter- 
vene, the question is presented, whether in any case intervention morally 
ought to take place, or whether it is even expedient it should take place. 

The real issue at stake cannot be properly investigated without a prelimi- 
nary inquiry into the mutual relations of Baptist churches to each other, as 
members of a great denominational community, and the relations of each 
church to the denomination as a whole. It may be true that, as in the 
growth of a church, so in the gradual formation of a denomination, the 
component members have been very imperfectly conscious of the social aim, 
to the attainment of which their best energies were directed, and which their 
very mistakes and errors are often as distinctly furthered as their conscious 
purposes and successes. And yet a common denominational necessity, com- 
mon sentiments of morality and rehgion, and an increasingly assimilated 
form of church government, are, and have long been, silently operating 
underneath all the mere superficial influences, and tending to enforce at once 
the value and efficacy of an independent denominational life, and the equal 
value of co-operation, through which each church shall profit, and derive 
profit from the whole. The notion of a true and necessary relationship be- 
tween church and church is steadily making way through a number of 
scarcely suspected avenues ; and the attendant notion of mutual and moral 
rights and duties as existing between different churches, independently of 
their weak and ephemeral governments, is recognized as the consequence and 
expression of those essential relationships. The very growth and structure of 
Baptist church government, at its best but a feeble image and counterpart 
of a moral system, is a testimony to the confessed belief in the existence of 
such relationships. From the known inherent infirmity of this kind of 
church government, it is obliged to lean on the strength of such sentiments 
as those of good faith, moral claim and obligation, equity and justice. But 
these sentiments alone, whatever may have been the history of their evolu- 
tion, if they are the bulwarks of Baptist church jurisprudence, cannot be 
its products. They have never rendered a legal system of church govern- 
ment possible by which one church can claim the legal as well as the moral 
right to interfere with the affairs of another, except through a tender of its 
good offices; but, nevertheless, these ties and relationships, in their turn, 
have done much to substantiate and protect the churches, and upon them 
they must rely to keep pure the gospel, as was done by and between the 
churches at Jerusalem and Antioch. 

Baptist churches subsist on independent footings of their own, and imply 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 267 

that independent churches have towards each other, or are generally be- 
lieved to have, moral relationships, which are an exact reproduction of the 
relationships that every member of a Baptist church has to every other. In 
approaching, then, the question of the moral right and duty of one church 
intervening in the affairs of another, it must be assumed that moral relation- 
ships and fellowships exist between church and church, which must be taken 
as the basis of interference, quite as much as the special and one-sided inter- 
est of a particular church or churches. But even with the help of this 
assumption, which regards free and independent Baptist churches, as bound 
together by the ties of moral right and obligation of the most enduring kind, 
the problem has yet to be solved as to when and how this intervention, which 
we see so beautifully took place between these two apostolic churches, may 
properly take place. In all moral inquiries it is quite as perplexing an in- 
vestigation to ascertain what is right and wrong, as to determine whether 
there is any right or wrong at all. But the preliminary question, as to 
whether a church can be morally justified in wholly isolating itself, and in 
exhibiting no public concern whatever in the transactions in which only 
other churches seem to be concerned, even though these transactions may in- 
volve the most serious issues to the peace of the denomination, must be 
answered first. What the churches at Jerusalem and Antioch did in their 
histories seems to answer the question in the sense that intervention is to be 
the rule, rather than the exception, when it is done with the consent of both 
churches as in this case. A troublesome heresy which produced no small 
dissension and disputation had sprung up at Antioch and the disciples called 
this counsel at Jerusalem with the consent of the church at Antioch, where 
they put the seal of condemnation upon the false doctrine taught, and with 
the award they sent chosen men of their company, which when they read they 
rejoiced for the consolation. 

It has always been a well-settled principle in Baptist church government 
that except for pacific and conciliatory purposes intervention is the exception 
and not the rule ; that all forcible and obnoxious intermeddling in the purely 
internal affairs of other churches is to be strenuously discountenanced, and 
even for pacific purposes it ought only to take place in disputes and quar- 
rels between other churches when a sufi[iciently strong case seems to present 
itself, where good can be accomplished by it, in weighing the merits of which 
case not only the immediate and remote interests of the church itself, but the 
interests of all other churches, and the general establishment of the denomi- 
national tranquillity and order, on the basis of free and independent church 
government, must be taken into the estimate. The doctrine of absolute in- 
difference is not one which Baptists have ever professed, and I do not think 
it is one which would be popular with the denomination at large. When 
the peace of a church, or that of the denomination, is at stake, we cannot 
absolutely decline to accept our share of the responsibility ; for, if every 
church that had reached a certain stage of religious development were to 
accept the principle of non-intervention in its absolute and extreme form, 
and say, " We will never meddle in any denominational questions unless our 



268 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

interests are touched," the effect would be to leave the regulation of all de- 
nominational affairs to churches which may not be as well qualified to do so 
as ours. No one is more strongly in favor of non-intervention, within rea- 
sonable limits, than I am ; but we should not push any doctrine to extremes, 
for an absolute declaration of non-intervention on all occasions would be a 
proclamation of denominational apathy, and it is a dull Baptist who does 
not know that denominational apathy does not mean either peace or progress. 

Taking then the example of the council at Jerusalem as an example, it has 
ever been adhered to as among the most effectual remedies for discords in 
Baptist churches, either apprehended or existing, and the friendly interven- 
tion or aid of churches not directly concerned in the dispute, tlarough the 
medium of councils, occupies a high place. To Baptists, indeed, who have 
no high ecclesiastical court of appeal, this sort of remedy appears the most 
efficacious and hopeful of all, and one of immediate application. But it is 
very evident that these unhappy troubles are the last expression of every 
other malady which disturbs the relations of churches, and that it can only 
be removed by a series of remedial processes which address themselves to all 
Baptist churches at once. Nevertheless, the function of friendly service on 
the part of other churches, whether taking the form of councils or not, de- 
servedly ranks high among the agencies for keeping quarrels and discords at 
a distance, and finally, perhaps, in the near future, providing a substitute 
for them. It would be proper then in this place to say something about that 
form of friendly intervention which we will call mediation. Its true charac- 
ter is well understood, from the close analogy presented in the circumstances 
of private life. Its success must always depend on the known integrity and 
disinterestedness of the mediating churches, and the higher the reputation of 
a church for public sincerity and impartiality, the more likely its services 
are to be put in requisition for this purpose. It thus appears that the 
province of mediation, by churches or pious brethren, will become larger 
and larger as ecclesiastical and denominational morality improves, and the 
desire for denominational peace becomes everywhere more urgent and sin- 
cere. A single church of conspicuous integrity and piety, and still more, 
any group of churches, through the medium of a proposed council, may thus 
confer inestimable benefits in averting, at an early stage, the possibilities 
of discords. 

Suppose the church at Jerusalem had remained indifferent to the call of the 
church at Antioch and refused to join in a council to help them settle their 
troubles, disastrous indeed would have been the consequences. It was in the 
highest degree desirable that the element of private interest should be en- 
tirely removed — an object which can best be secured, in respect to such cases 
as these, by habits of combined policy among as great a number of churches 
as possible, and especially those churches which are above the suspicion of 
having an interested motive lower than that of promoting the denomina- 
tional peace, order, and general well-being. Thus, so far as this sort of in- 
tervention is concerned, it is above all desirable that the purity of the 
motives should be conspicuous, and, for this end, the more churches that 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 269 

join, tbe better the reputation for the honesty of purpose of the government 
of those churches ; and the greater the publicity of the grounds of interven- 
tion alleged, the less likely is the intervention to be considered inexpedient, 
unjust, and provocative of discord. The case of the other sort of interven- 
tion, that of taking a public part on one side or the other in a dispute or 
quarrel between two sister churches, presents far greater difficulties than the 
former kind, because the breach is thereby widened instead of healed, and 
no church that has the denominational welfare at heart can be induced to do 
so. It is certainly by abstinence from siding with one faction or the other, 
that a just and pacific church will always best promote the cause of peace 
and order, or even succeed long in keeping discord at a distance from its 
own door. If it be true that Baptist churches, however various in charac- 
ter, numbers or temporary influence, together constitute a true denomina- 
tional community, of which the component members owe moral duties, and 
have moral rights in respect to one another, then such a breach of order and 
social continuity which such an intermeddling brings about, cannot but be a 
matter of most urgent moment to every member of a Baptist church, and 
should meet with a summary condemnation. 

That the apostles never intended that the council at Jerusalem should be 
an example of a fixed and standing government, to which appeals are to be 
made is evident from the fact that the church at Antioch consulted not with 
the churches of her o-wn province, but goes to Jerusalem, a church of Judea. 
This one example cannot serve as an instance of a standing council, but a 
reference by the local church at Antioch of their differences among them- 
selves, and they went of choice to the local church at Jerusalem and to no 
other. It really partakes more of the nature of an arbitration than a stand- 
ing council for rule and government. It was even an elective body of men, 
naming them, sent up there out of election and choice to them, and they went 
up with one specific question at this time, without any obligation to refer all 
other matters to them or to a like body in an arbitrary way. It seems that it 
was not the church at Jerusalem that was busying itself about the affairs of the 
church at Antioch, although gross errors were being taught there, but it all 
rested with the church at Antioch as to whether they would seek the aid and 
counsel of the church at Jerusalem. Nor is this example a sufficient 
authority for the multiplication of councils such as one above another, but 
only one council whose judgment the Antioch brethren sought, and on whose 
judgment they proposed to rest the case. Much less is it the instance of the 
rearing up of inferior and superior councils with right of appeal from one 
to the other. And much less does it hold that the churches of a particular 
district may claim a right judicially to decide these disputes and oblige them, 
sub pena, to their determination, and then the churches of a whole state or 
nation to claim a right of rule over all. 

The only Scriptural rule deducible from the council at Jerusalem, is this : 
that when offences arise among churches appeals or rather references ought 
to be made to councils before judgment rendered in the churches wherein the 
differences exist, to a church or churches abroad to heal them. But the 



270 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

question arises, to what church or churches these references are to be made, 
and how ? The example of the Antioch church affords us the only Scrip- 
tural answer to this question. As that church was the offended or divided 
church, and it selected without let or hindrance the church of its choice as 
fittest and ablest to refer the whole matter to, so churches of this day may 
do likewise. This is clear from this example : Antioch was not bound to 
refer their quarrel to the church at Jeresalem, as greater, or as next door 
neighbor, or as of the same association, but doubtless as best able to judge 
of the differences. And this way agrees with common sense and the law of 
nature, and of arbitration so usual among men which God has set as a pat- 
tern to follow in such cases. Therefore, should a difference arise between 
brethren which is likely to produce divisions, for instance, in the First 
Church at Washington, that church is not bound to refer the matter to its 
sister, Calvary Church, in the same city, but the contending parties may 
agree to refer the matter to a sister church in Baltimore, Richmond, New 
York or Philadelphia, or to all these churches combined, but the First 
Church must make its own choice, agreeing to abide by the award they may 
render. 

But suppose a sister church should fall into grave errors, and the whole 
church should partake of the error, and be content to abide therein, with no 
man, or set of men, members of the church to contend for the faith as was 
the case at Antioch, what remedy have sister churches to rectify these errors? 
Herein we find the wisdom and utility of associations. Should a church of 
this character be associated with other churches, it evidently would become 
the duty of the churches composing the association to refuse such a church 
admission to a seat in the body until such time as it might repent and amend 
any errors apparent therein, of which the association would have a right to 
judge, but not to unchurch them. As every church has a right to judge of 
the fitness and qualification of its own members, to use the key to open or 
close the door of the church, so every association, by the law of nature and 
reason, has a right to bar its doors against any church by reason of disorders 
therein that may be offensive to them. This serves as a wholesome admoni- 
tion to churches to be thus cut off from the association and intercourse with 
sister churches, and puts them seriously upon inquiry as to whether these 
things complained of be true or false, and ought in every instance to result 
in the calling of a judicious council to ascertain the truth of the complaints, 
for no church can afford to live under the ban and displeasure of sister 
churches if they have any regard for the denominational tranquillity. 

So the refusal of an association to receive into its fellowship a sister church 
for having committed a gross impropriety, is a kind of a censure. A church 
inflicts its censures by way of excommunication. There is in this a special 
judicature, by way of ecclesiastical authority, and has accompanying it the 
power of Christ. Therefore, this is by special institution. But there is a 
different kind of judgment which a church, or an association, passes upon an 
erring church. The one is a divine institution, and the other is by way of 
the common or customary law of the churches. This seems to have been 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 271 

SO held by the apostle Paul himself, for when he comes to speak of judging 
the incestuous Corinthian of his sin, he makes the church's authority a settled 
government when he says : For what have I to do to judge them also that 
are without f Do ye not judge them that are within f But them that are with- 
out God judges. While in another place he would have the brethren not go 
to law one with another before a profane court, and speaks of taking up 
differences about things of this life, he would have them do it among them- 
selves by way of arbitration or amicable settlement. While he did not com- 
mand this, though it was Christ's will it should be done for the sake of 
avoiding scandals. He does not command them to go to the ministry, or to 
the church for the settlement of these things, but he bids them to choose 
whom they please; upon the common ground of abiUty and fitness, to do 
the work. So that we see that in the way of settling diff*erences between 
brethren it was not by way of a fixed tribunal, or council for government, 
but it was only occasional and by way of arbitration, according to the com- 
mon law of nature and reason ; whereas in all matters of discipline and 
excommunication it was by way of a constant and settled government in a 
local church, and that invested with a supernatural spiritual power and 
efficacy which the other has not. 

In Baptist church government there is a general association and com- 
munion held between the churches, and ought to be, and yet the one cannot 
assume a power over the other, but each retains a power of jurisdiction 
entire within itself. This different kind of communion, appears by this, that 
there are duties which one church owes to another upon mere moral and 
spiritual grounds, as that one church should endeavor to build up other 
churches in the faith and doctrine of the gospel, and to admonish them, and 
not let a sin lie at their door and to show their displeasure if they do not 
repent. Indeed there is scarcely any duty that is practiced in a local church, 
but that a duty of a like kind is required between church and church. So 
that if one brother walks disorderly it becomes the duty of another to 
instruct, or to reprove him, and Hkewise if one church should fall into errors 
sister churches should in a proper unofficious way labor with, and admonish 
it that it may be preserved to the denomination and aU the churches be 
kept pure. 

Every church has a right of resisting, in some way or other, that which 
ought not to be done to it in violation of the common law of the churches ; 
and though this law does not in all cases make churches judges and punishers 
of the injuries offered to them, there is none who do not justify a church in 
its friendly admonitions when a sister church falls into disorder. This, in 
no sense at all, detracts from its dignity, or sovereignty. And while every 
church is under obligations to preserve, with the utmost care, the hberty and 
independence it inherits from the law of the gospol, yet when it has not 
sufficient strength in itself, and feels itself unable to preserve its unity, it 
may lawfully by consent submit grave questions of doctrine and practice to 
a council, on certain conditions ageed upon by both parties at interest, and 
the articles of submis^iion will thenceforward be the measure and rule of the 



272 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JUEISPRTJDENCE ,* 

rights of each, provided they violate no fundamental principles. For since 
those who enter into these agreements resign a right which naturally belongs 
to them, and transfer it to a council, they are at perfect liberty to annex 
what conditions they please to the transfer ; and the other party by agreeing 
thereto, engages to observe religiously all the articles of agreement. The 
council may be invested with the power to pass upon the whole question at 
dispute. For instance, if a minister be on trial for heresy, it may be 
empowered to say in the award whether the matter taught be heresy or not. 
If he be charged with a scandulous life, it may say he is guilty, or not guilty, 
according to the facts. In other words a council may be entrusted with the 
power to decide upon the merits of any controversy submitted to it, but in 
no instance can it render a decree of excommunication upon the facts found 
or pronounce a censure. In all cases, as has been stated before, the findings 
of the council must be referred back to the church to be carried into execu- 
tion. Any church dissolves itself, as such, which would undertake to trans- 
fer its sovereignty to a council. For having entered into a church does not 
oblige its members to submit to its authority when it destroys itself in order 
to submit to a foreign dominion, but when it divests itself of that quality in 
order to receive its laws from another body, it breaks the bonds of union 
between its members, and releases them from all further ecclesiastical 
obligations. 

We have hereinbefore stated, and we wish to emphasize the fact, that 
councils are not to be convened upon every ground of dissatisfaction in a 
church, nor in cases of light moment. They are proper only upon some 
matter of common interest to the churches at large ; such as relations of 
fellowship between churches, or the relation of a member to the communion 
of other churches, or matters of general interest to the cause of Christ. Any 
occasion when help is needed to secure light, peace or puritj^ of the churches, 
is a proper occasion for the calling of a council. Mere differences of opinion 
between a majority and a minority within a church, may, with the consent 
of all parties, be referred to a council for advice, but their award binds only 
such as consent. When a church member is under process of discipline, if 
he can persuade the church to join him in referring the unfinished matter to 
a council, it is proper and customary that such a council be called. But it 
is not proper should the church refuse so to refer the case, for him to call an 
ex-parte council, for it is to be charitably presumed that his own church wiU 
do him justice when the case is finally disposed of. Should he, however, be 
cut off from the church in the face of his conscientious couvictions that his 
exclusion is not warranted by the facts in the case, or by the word of God, 
he will then have the right, after having res-pectfully asked the church 
to join him in the call of a council for a rehearing of his case, and has been 
unreasonably refused, to call upon other churches for advice and relief, be- 
cause his relations to them or his right to join one of them have been dis- 
turbed by his excommunication. So, if a member in good standing in a 
church ask to be dismissed to a sister church, and a letter of dismission be 
denied him, it is nothing but reasonable to demand a trial or for him to re- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 273 

quest a council, and should the church refuse to join in such a request he 
may himself call one to give him relief, because his right to transfer, which 
is the common-law right of fellowship of the churches, has been interfered 
with, which interference is strictly an interruption of comity, between the 
churches, as well as a wrong to himself. The findings of such a council are 
advisory only, and have no obligatory force in them only in so far as the 
churches may, or may not, see proper to adopt them. 

A church must always be the party to call a council, with the two excep- 
tions of the formation of a church, when the individuals desiring to become 
a church call it, and an ex-parte council when an aggrieved member expressly 
bases his call upon the fact that he has asked his church to convoke a 
mutual council, and has met with what he conceives to be an unjust refusal 
to do so ; because this is the only feasible means of a redress which the 
gospel must be assumed, in some way, to provide, under the just principle 
that when there is a wrong there is a remedy. There are three kinds of 
councils : Such as are assembled by the consent, and at the request of two 
parties in a divided church standing against each other which are called 
Mutual ; Such as are convened on the call of one party and when others have 
unreasonably refused to join in a call for a mutual council, which are called 
Ex-parte councils ; and lastly, such councils as are called together by indi- 
viduals seeking church fellowship and regular standing in the denomination, 
or by churches, as such, which ask light, or peace, which are called J. cZmsor?/. 

All councils are convened by letters missive, which is a written request to 
a sister church that they send a certain brother, therein named, to sit with 
the church, at a time and place, and for a specific purpose stated. The 
number to be chosen is left to the parties calling the council. They may all 
be chosen from the same church, or selected from several sister churches, 
whether they be neighboring churches, or those remotely situated. For the 
reason that the power of a council is derived, and not inherent, it has no 
right to increase, or diminish its number. No conscientious brother should 
sit in a council unless its members have been fairly chosen, and where he 
may have reason to suspect that through prejudice, or self-interest, its 
members may not be impartial. And upon the same principle a church has 
the perfect right, for cause, to refuse to send a representative to sit in council 
when invited. Likewise councils can exercise the right to inquire into the 
standing of the churches from which representatives or councilors have been 
sent, and members may retire, or refuse to act, if they become satisfied that 
the good faith involved in the call of the council has been abused. 

The common sense rule that the majority of a council must be held to be 
that body, is the one to regulate the question of a quorum to transact busi- 
ness. Should, however, a minority only of a council chosen be present, it 
has no right to proceed to the business for which it was convened. Such a 
minority, however, have a right to adjourn, and thus carry over the legal 
force of their authority to the date of a second session, in order that a ftill 
council may convene They may organize, as any other similar body of 
men may, by the election of a moderator and a secretary, and may adopt 
18 



274 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

the ordinary rules of parliamentary bodies for their own government. The 
investigation of every council must be held rigidly to the exact specifications 
of the letter missive. Much more so must the decision be confined within 
this limit. The obiter dictum of a council, though sensible in its intent, and 
useful in its quality, can be injected into its decision only as a piece of im- 
pertinence As to whether counsel should be alloAved either party before 
the council should be left to their good discretion. But no good reason ap- 
pears why a lawyer, or some other brother, skilled in such things, should not 
be allowed, provided he be a member of a Baptist church and is in good 
standing, and has not, through prejudice, become a partisan in the case. But 
by no means should councils be held to the strict rules of evidence as prac- 
ticed in a court of justice. The witnesses may, or may not, be under oath 
or affirmation, as the parties may choose, and hearsay evidence may be 
taken for what it is worth. These are all matters of detail and should be 
agreed upon before the investigation is opened and should be such as to 
afford the fullest and fairest means of arriving at the truth of the matters 
submitted. 

The result of every council is always measured by the character, integrity, 
wisdom and good intentions of those who compose it. As has been before 
stated, it is of great consequence, when possible, for absolute unanimity to be 
attained by every council in its decisions. But if this is not possible the 
general judgment should be expressed in a formal result, and so criticised 
and amended as that the majority may take it as it stands. There are some 
instances, however, when it might be infinitely better for the council to come 
to no formal conclusion whatever, as offering more hope of good than any 
other course, or it might so happen that the parties might withdraw the sub- 
ject matter submitted at the request of the council, and so prevent a result. 
With the exception of rare cases when by mutual consent beforehand, all 
the parties bind themselves to accept and adopt its provisions, every award 
is in the nature of friendly advice which has solemn weight from the con- 
sideration that a council properly called, for a proper purpose, has a divine 
efficacy in it. If not contrary to the Scriptures it should be reverently ac- 
cepted as the voice of Christ, and as the reasonable and divinely warranted 
means of terminating differences that might wreck the church, and other- 
wise work interminable mischief The award of every council necessarily 
interprets itself, and is purely a question of language, and means what it 
says, all that it says, and nothing else. No member of a council is author- 
ized to interpret it, and when a question has arisen as to its intent, applica- 
tion ought never to be made to the moderator of the council, or to any mem- 
ber, as if they were authorized to furnish an authentic commentary upon the 
action taken. Too great care, however, cannot be taken to make such a 
document distinct and unambiguous. 

Morafity and a high sense of justice, indeed, are as applicable to and as 
binding upon councils as it is upon individuals, and upon churches that ap- 
point them, as upon any one else. In the handling of these delicate interests, 
wrong and injury may be perpetrated by them as well as by man, and what- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 275" 

ever they may do amiss is in all respects as heinous in the one as in the 
other, and more so because it cannot be punished with the same facility. A 
perfect code of ecclesiastical jurisprudence should provide for these exigencies ; 
and those who offend should be arraigned at the bar of denominational pub- 
lic ooinion, just as any other offender is arraigned for misconduct, thereby 
causing councils to deal seriously and justly with these momentous interests. 

The awards of councils, like all other agreements by consent, are irrevoca- 
ble, and are binding on all the parties to them alike, and can, on no account 
or pretext, be violated or departed from, or even modified, without the con- 
sent of all the parties to them. The utmost that can be allowed as regards 
their relaxation is the submission of a proposal for their revision by those 
who entered into them ; the only pretext for which, can be such an alteration 
of circumstances as entirely changes the state of things under which they 
were made. And even this affords no excuse for their violation without the 
consent of all who entered into them. The due observance of the findings 
of councils is as essential for the maintenance of confidence and fellowship 
in a church as is that of promises for the continuance of respect and unity 
among men. Noth withstanding this, there are no pieces of writing which 
are, from their very inception, so brittle as awards of ecclesiastical councils. 
There is always an element of unwillingness in the imposition of them wliich 
is wholly alien to the deliberate voluntariness Avhich a true mental engagement 
presupposes, and Avhich, in the case of any ordinary legal contract, must be 
present as of course. Apart, too, from this unwillingness, such an agree- 
ment is always made under circumstances of irritation and animosity, as well 
as haste, at a moment when the interests and feelings of the contracting fac- 
tions seem to be violently opposed, and when the latent object of the agreement 
on both sides must be not to further the common advantage of both, but to fur- 
ther the separate ends of each at the expense of the other. It is impossible to 
picture an occasion less suited to that impartial survey of a number of conflict- 
ing and complex interests and that calm appreciation of the merits of com- 
peting advantages, near and remote, present and future, certain and 
contingent, which a hopeful settlement of long-disputed questions between 
contending members of a divided church eminently demands. 

If the security of him who stipulates for anything in his own favor prompts 
him, or councilmen in his interests, to require precision, fulness and the 
greatest clearness in the expressions in drafting an award, good faith de- 
mands, on the other hand, that each party should express his promises 
clearly, and without ambiguity. The faith of articles of submission and of 
awards of councils are basely prostituted by studying to couch them in vague 
or equivocal terms, to introduce ambiguous expressions, to reserve subjects of 
disputes, to overreach those with whom they are made, and outdo them in 
cunning and duplicity. Let the man who excels in these arts boast of his 
happy talents, and esteem himself a keen negotiator ; but reason and the 
sacred law of candor and the gospel, will class him as beneath a vulgar 
cheat and fraud. True skill consists in guarding against imposition, not in 
practising it. Who can doubt that the solemn awards of councils are in the 



276 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

nature of those things that are to be held sacred by the churches ? By 
councils the most important affairs of the churches are determined ; by them 
the pretensions of contending factions in a divided church are settled and 
regulated; on them churches are to depend for the acknowledgments of 
their rights and duties, and the security of their dearest interests. They are 
the only tribunals recognized by the law of the gospel outside of a church to 
which resort is allowable to adjust our troubles. In Baptist churches that 
have, and acknowledge no superior on earth, councils are the only means of 
adjusting their various pretensions, of ascertaining what they are entitled to 
expect, and what they have to depend on. But the awards of councils are 
no better than empty words, if churches do not consider them solemn en- 
gagements, and as rules which are to be inviolably observed by all who 
promise to so do, and held sacred throughout the whole denomination. 

It is but rashness to urge that as inasmuch as the findings of councils are 
sometimes through ignorance or prejudice erroneous, that therefore their 
decisions should not stand. Christ and his apostles in erecting this tribunal 
were not ignorant that those chosen to fill this important office would often- 
times be deceived in their judgment. But doubtless they considered that 
such judgments should prevail till the same or alike authority, perceiving the 
error, might afterwards correct or reverse it, rather than that strifes and dissen- 
sions should grow and divide the denomination. Not that it is right that breth- 
ren should be compelled to do something which in their hearts they are per- 
suaded they ought not to do, but they ought to be persuaded in their hearts 
that in controverted causes the will of Christ is to have them, for the time 
being at least, to do whatsoever the sentence of a judicial council shall 
determine, though it seem in their private opinion to deviate from that 
which is right. For if Christ be not the author of confusion, but of peace 
and order, then how can he be the author of our refusal to abide by such 
decisions as have been rendered by the only tribunal in ecclesiastical juris- 
prudence authorized to render them. Under the Jewish economy God 
erected a tribunal for the determination of all controversies, concerning 
which it is said : That man which will do presumptuously, not hearkening 
unto the priest that standeth before the Lord to minister there, nor unto the 
judge, let him die. Then let no man labor to overthrow these decisions lest 
he incur the ill will, and displeasure of God, who is a God of law and order 
and not of confusion, since the law of God and reason favor these decisions 
until some orderly judgment of a like tribunal be given against them, and it 
is but justice to render thereunto a willing and ready obedience. 

We have thus attempted to give a brief compendium of the rights, powers 
and duties of ecclesiastical councils. In the treatment of the subject we 
have labored under many embarrassments, owing to the want of Baptist 
authorities upon the subject. These inquiries, however, are not without their 
value, as they tend to disclose principles, which, while they may not in a 
very logical way cover the whole subject, yet they may be useful guides in 
solving the narrower and more immediate problems of ecclesiastical councils, 
and help others in a more methodical study of the subject. Thus it might 



OB, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 277 

be expected that in the handling of a subject like this, perhaps more than 
elsewhere, the functions of the lawyer and commentator almost unavoidably 
have slidden into that of the legislator. In fact the two functions cannot be 
wholly kept apart, because it sometimes happens that the existing rule can 
only be understood by examining its reasons, or even by setting forth in full 
the controversies amidst which it hardly maintains its existence. Neverthe- 
less we have tried to separate the legislative function from the strictly legal 
one, where it was possible ; and this is especially difficult in the treatment of a 
subject like that of ecclesiastical councils, in which so many strong passions, 
and generous, though uninformed, instincts, are wont to divorce the discussion 
of it altogether from a regard to the practical difficulties that sometimes 
overtake our free and independent form of church government. 

In one short chapter like this it is impossible to notice the various extra- 
ecclesiastical councils assembled in the early times of Christianity or what 
they decided. Suffice it to say that Baptists not believing in their right to 
convene and pass upon grave questions of faith and practice in the churches 
and to impose their decisions upon the Christian world, they are not so 
much concerned about what they did. It is safe to say that the council held 
at Jerusalem forms the basis or grounds for all the councils which have 
given to all Pedo-Baptists their federative systems now extant in the world. 
It is not until the third century that these councils had become standing 
institutions, and met yearly. From these beginnings have sprung all our 
modern synods, conferences and assemblies which claim not only legislative 
and administrative, but judicial powers. It is these bodies that have so 
deeply left their mark on the doctrine and polity on the constitution 
of these post-apostolic systems. It is in vain that they seek the prototype 
of the first council held at Jerusalem as a model for these overgrown in- 
vented institutions. The last great catholic council, called the Vatican coun- 
cil which- assembled in 1870, decided that the Pope was infallible, which is 
as much as to say by all reasonable intendment, at least, that there need 
never be another council assembled as long as time lasts, for now the Pope 
can infallibly settle all controversies whether of faith or practice ! There- 
tofore Ecumenical Councils had had much to do with the settlement of grave 
questions of church, but the Popes had long before that become restive under 
the restraints imposed by these bodies, and this council placed in the then 
Pope's hands unbridled power to rule the whole Catholic church as best 
pleased himself as the successor to Peter. This was but a reasonable culmi- 
nation of that religious madness which ecclesiastical power when central- 
ized never fails to engender. The papacy is to be congratulated, from a 
worldly standpoint, in arriving at that degree of perfection which makes 
the head of this monstrous power both divine and infallible. If such a 
people do not go to other and further extremes, if possible, it will not be 
because the system of church government to which they belong will not 
allow them, and really will not lead them on. How blessed ought Baptists 
to consider themselves to be, because God has marvelously preserved them 
from such a fate. Kather let them stand fast in that liberty wherewith 
Christ has made them free. 



278 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 



CHAPTER X. 

THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL, NOT A CHURCH PROPER AND CANNOT BE THE 
SEAT OF INSTITUTED CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 

IT is claimed by the Papists and all others who believe that councils, con- 
ferences and general assemblies have authority over the local churches 
to rule and govern them, that Christ intended to establish, and did establish, 
but one church, to extend throughout the earth, as an universal church. 
The Papists believe that the Popes of Rome are successors to Peter, and 
invested as the vicars and vicegerents of Christ with the supreme legislative, 
executive, judicial and elective power over the whole church ; that the gov- 
ernment of the church is not only a monarchy, but an universal monarchy ; 
and that the Pope is not only absolutely supreme, but infallible. It is said 
he can judge, but cannot be judged. On the subject of ecclesiastical govern- 
ment, is is maintained not only by the Papists, but all Protestant sects who 
have come out of the Papacy and who have learned their lessons from them, 
that man being necessarily associated, and necessarily governed, church 
sovereignty and all other powers of church government result directly from 
the nature and calling of the priesthood and not from the will or consent of 
the people who compose the churches; that church sovereignty no more 
results from their will than the church itself does ; and hence the broad con- 
clusion has been deduced, that the rulers of the church do not depend on 
the choice, favor or will of the membership, but on the divine will alone 
exercised by the clergy, who has conferred the power on them on account of 
the necessity that the church should be governed, and of the inability of the 
membership to govern themselves. This is the foundation of the doctrine of 
the legitimacy of the universal church and of the divine right of the 
priesthood. 

Every other religious denomination except the Baptists are now living in 
an age which is the development of ages of successive changes in church 
polity. There is scarcely a phase of their various systems which is not 
almost entirely different from what it has ever been before in the experience 
of those people ; and yet each is the result of innumerable changes in the 
past which led up naturally to the present condition by a connected series 
of steps. How could it be othermse when these people have constantly on 
hand standing committees and legislative bodies charged with the powers 
and duties of legislating for their respective churches? Hence new laws 
are being constantly made and unmade. They thus become the unbridled 
makers and unmakers of their own laws. They thus attack all that is old, 
and open a path to all that is new. Every feature of their church pohty 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 279 

evidences the influence of these changes whether they be good or bad, 
Scriptural or otherwise. Yet our Baptist churches, and every means by 
which a religious people improve their condition, change immeasurably, and 
yet the original form of government once delivered to them by the apostles 
remains unchanged, and indeed can never be changed by man. Surely it is 
but reasonable that the apostolic form of church polity should be preserved 
and held intact ; while all the factors which go to make up the progress and 
development of the churches should grow and expand without let or hin- 
drance, evenly and proportionately ; and that all those blessed agencies which 
aid the spread of the gospel should not be burdened and hampered by any 
want of elasticity in the government of the churches, but that everji:hing 
should give way to this great desideratum. 

It is a mystery as to how this tremendous deposit of power ever became 
crystallized in one overgrown body called a church. It may have first 
sprung from the union of church and state ; from the struggles of turbulent 
factions in the apostoKc churches ; from gradual encroachments on the field 
of ecclesiastical liberty and independence of the churches ; its tenure may 
be due to the vast advantage which force and power concentrated has over 
force dispersed, and the advantages of concentrated action in procuring it. 
In a rude and turbulent state of society, such as that was in those early 
days of the churches, with no adequate and organized protection against 
violence, the mass of men will, by a law of their nature, follow in the wahe, 
and then fall under the command, of designing leaders who promise them 
protection ; and by another law of their nature, the leaders in turn become 
the plunderers of those who placed themselves under their protection, whose 
sweetest pleasure consists in discovering in themselves quahties that give 
cauj-e for self-glorification, and for elevating themselves above their kind. 
The mysterious minghng of audacity on the -part of priests, and submission 
on the part of the laity, of impertinence and confidence in self, and great awe 
and reverence inspired by the submission of others, coupled with this always 
active love of dominion and domination over others, will go far to explain 
the origin of the Catholic form of church government, by showing how this 
centralized polity at first became vested in one or a few men, to the exclu- 
sion of the membership and to the utter overthrow of the churches ; and 
will show why the natural apostolic order has been inverted, by religious 
liberty coming down from church government, in the form of ecclesiastical 
concessions to the churches, instead of going up from the churches in the 
form of ecclesiastical guaranties. 

Such is the system of ecclesiastical polity, without one popular feature in 
it and without any Scripture authority for it, which holds dominion over the 
minds of millions of the people, the great body of whom seem to be studi- 
ously kept in profound ignorance that they may be managed and governed 
the more easily, and that their rulers may think for them and save them the 
trouble of thinking for themselves. 

One of the greatest and main abuses of Scripture, and the one to 
wb'ch almost all the rest are consequent or subservient, is the using of it to 



280 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; 

prove that the Kingdom of God, mentioned so often in Scripture, is the 
present church, or multitude of Christians now living, or belonging to a cer- 
tain denomination. The result of this error that the present church is thus 
composed is another and a greater one, which is that there ought to be some 
one man, or assembly of men, by whose mouth our Saviour speaks and gives 
laws and governs his church on earth. 

Now, let it be remembered that government, whether secular or divine, is 
and must of necessity be a reasonable thing. And if it be true that Christ 
never granted supreme eccesiastical power to the local church, but invested 
the church universal with such power, it is passing strange that Christ should 
appoint such a government and leave it loosely for the persons who were to 
rule it, to set it in motion, and never so much as lay down any of the ways 
and means of that government. In so great a body as that of the universal 
church on earth, destined to be scattered all over the world, and in so great 
and intricate a government necessary to set it in operation, there was need 
to have had the most sure and certain* order distinctly appointed by Christ. 
The question ought to have presented itself to the great founder of this 
church as to whether the government should have been Papal, Episcopal or 
Presbyterian : Whether it should be ruled by a pope, a cardinal, a bishop, 
a presiding elder or a ruling elder : Whether there should be but one gen- 
eral assembly to which all controversies should be brought, Hke the Sanhe- 
drim in Israel, or whether they should be divided up into subordinate cir- 
cuits with a ruler in each: Whether these assemblies should be constant 
standing bodies, or chosen every year: Whether in it there should be more 
of ruling or teaching elders, and how many of them, and by what rules 
they should be chosen: And what jurisdiction these various assemblies 
should each have and how much power should be left in the poor little local 
churches and how divided up between them and the church universal. 

It is a wonder that Christ set down none of these great things, that he 
neither appointed one general assembly or conference to which aU appeals 
should be brought, and if there were to be subordinate bodies one to another 
he has not so declared it, nor has he assigned how many there should be, 
nor so much as declared that there should be any such bodies nor that one 
should be above another in power and dignity. And if the general law of 
this supposed, imaginary government is that the few should rule the many, 
and that without their consent, this would be an exceedingly loose and con- 
fused foundation of a settled government ; and no one ought to be so sacri- 
legious as to say that Christ did not leave behind him a government both 
settled and reasonable. Surely in a matter of such importance there should 
be of necessity a most positive law to determine- at least the outlines of this 
cumbersome government whereby it could be intelligently executed, or else 
every one would challenge the right of the other to govern, as it is outside 
of Baptist church government to-day. 

Now, Christ never gave an institution which was never brought forth into 
acts and examples, but such is this pretended institution of a church universal 
to be the seat of government. Whatever of clearness there is in apostolic 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 281 

church government is the result of a thus did the Lord rather than a thus 
said the Lord. That which Baptists have ever contended for is that the 
only way we can be assured as to what is a church of Christ is by examples 
which we meet with in the Scriptures, without which we can know absolutely 
nothing as to what kind of government is suited to them, for all authority 
and all power is visionary and in vain, which cannot be brought into the 
condition of acting 

We have no account that Christ ever invested this universal church w^ith 
government, because we have no examples of that kind of a church in the 
Scriptures. Besides we have no account that the early churches under the 
immediate supervision of the apostles' ever met or were convened by them to 
institute this church. Nor that these apostolic churches were ever assembled 
at a time closely following the apostles time to institute an universal church 
with ecclesiastical power. Surely Christ did not set up a visionary principle 
of government with a polity purely speculative. To make the thing plain 
and reasonable all churches should have disbanded their own organizations, 
that which Christ instituted, and joined together and formally entered into a 
covenant one with another to erect this ecclesiastical government, and this uni- 
versal Christian assembly should have been composed of all interested and 
should have determined all questions of polity as well as of doctrine, and should 
have bound all churches thereunto ; because all Christians taken together 
could not become a Christian body politic, but as they were formed up into 
a kingdom, which at best could be but a human invention. This could not 
have been done without doing great violence to Christ's already instituted 
local churches, for to erect another church including and embracing these 
bodies there would have been a conflict of jurisdiction, and where Christ in- 
tended there should be order there would have been confusion and discord. 

It cannot be that all primary ecclesiastical power fell upon the church 
universal, for it has none of the reality of a church. For the great object of 
the institution of a church Avas to have the power to do four things : to 
assemble, to preach, to baptize, and to administer the Lord's Supper, neither 
of which is this universal church capable of doing. A regularly instituted 
local church is inseparably associated and connected with these four great 
laws of Christ's church. Certainly not since the institution of the first church 
at Jerusalem have all Christians assembled together to hear their pastor 
preach the gospel, to baptize a believer, or to partake of the Lord's Supper. 
These great ordinances were committed to the local churches and as such 
have ever been confined to these churches and can only be performed by them 
in their sovereign capacities as assembled churches. There is involved in 
preaching three things : a preacher, a doctrine, and an assembhj to hear the 
doctrine preached. If it be said that the universal church can call the 
preacher and establish the doctrine, it certainly cannot assemble to hear the 
doctrine preached, to be edified by it and to see whether it bo the true 
doctrine authorized to be preached. Who then can be the judge of the doc- 
trine but the local church ? The same may be said of the other two ordi- 
nances, baptism and the Lord's Supper ; they are not only local church 
ordinances, but can only be administered in and by these churches. 



282 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUKCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

Yv'lien Paul said in his first letter to the church at Corinth : When the 
xohole church is come together in one place, there are three things mentioned : 
a church, an assembly, and a place ; showing that this particular church was 
composed of as many as might eome together in one place and he calls that 
the whole church which was only the members at Corinth. The same idea is 
conveyed when the apostle says to this same church, When ye come togethtr 
therefore in one place ; that is, you come together not only with one mind, 
but in one place. Yet that could not have been said of the church universal 
then and especially now, for that mystical body is the redeemed all over the 
world. Christ did so institute his church and restrict it to such a number as 
could assemble at one place for the express reason that the end and purpose 
of such a church was full and entire communion, such as those who should 
meet together should partake of, being of one mind as they were one body. 
And then reason teaches, that it can only be such an assembly as can all 
hear and be edified by the same pastor at the same time and place, and who 
may glorify God with one mouth and one mind. 

When the apostle rejoicing beheld the order of the church at Colos?e, he 
meant the ranking and ordering of all the members into such proper offices 
according to their several gifts, that all the ordinances might be administered 
and enjoyed to the use and benefit of the whole. As, therefore, it is called a 
body, for the identity of the members which are of the same nature, it is also 
called. The whole body fitly joined together. It is not only fitly joined, 
together, but rightly placed and disposed of according to the gifts of every 
member, not for ornament and beauty only of the whole, but for the supply- 
ing of nourishment to the whole, which under the similitude of a body 
the apostle so much and so often insists upon. These gifts are various ; so 
are the members of the body. As the human body is composed of flesh, 
blood, veins, nerves, arteries and bones, so the members with their divers 
gifts constitute a whole church instituted by Christ. 

This unity in the church forming a body is as substantial in church gov- 
ernment as it is to have officers and laws to guide them. Take any society 
of men that is organized for government, and if the officers and laws of it are 
defined, the body itself as well as the bounds of its jurisdiction are defined 
also. This is true especially of such bodies as hold, from a supreme power, 
the authority for their government, as all churches hold their authority from 
Christ the supreme founder. In this case it is every way as essential to have 
the body of the church formed into unity, and the extent of their jurisdic- 
tion fixed, as it is to have officers in it and laws by which they are governed. 
It is as necessary as the setting out the boundary of every man's lands by 
metes, abutments and landmarks. It is as great abuse of power for a judge 
to do an act of government out of his jurisdiction as an undue and unlawful 
act within it. So any act done by a church which reaches beyond its bounds 
and limits is null and void. If, indeed, church government could be sup- 
posed to be a matter of that nature, that such limits to the seat of its juris- 
diction did not exist in it, but might be transacted promiscuously outside of 
such limits, then there is no such thing as ecclesiastical government in the 
world and all is chaos and confusion. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL, 283 

In that which follows we can but continue to insist that the kingdom of 
God used in the sense of a church, cannot be a church for government witli- 
out being instituted upon a rational basis. For an usurpation in church 
government lies not only in an undue form of government which Christ has 
not instituted, and in usurping undue acts of power within it, which he never 
authorized, but it consists especially in a few men assuming to extend a local 
church so as to spread over and embrace many churches, the examples for 
which are not found in the Scriptures. So that, ail things considered, the 
institution of a particular church falls most happily, uniformly and ade- 
quately upon a local congregation entirely and alone, and upon no other 
kind of a church at all. It cannot be reasoned that by virtue of the same 
authority that believers make up a local church, many churches make up 
one church, and more of those churches may make up a still greater church 
for legislation, for government and for appeals ; and to say by the same rea- 
son the universal church comes to be a political body to rule the state. 
Whereas it is true that Christ has not only instituted a local independent 
church, but has appointed what the extent and bounds of it should be. 

The logical conclusion is that if the apostolic churches had all ecclesiasti- 
cal power in themselves they had no lawful right to divest themselves of that 
power and invest it in another body. And if these first churches could not 
surrender their independence and sovereignty, such as claim under them can 
inherit no power from those that had none, for none can give to any a power 
which they have not, and none can receive a power from those who have it 
not ; and, therefore, there can be no divine right in all these extra-ecclesi- 
astical governments. 

When men assemble by a human power, that power . that assembles them 
may also limit the manner of the execution of that power. But when men 
assemble to build a church of Clu'ist, and take their authority from the law 
of Christ, it is different ; for what hberty or freedom is due to any man, 
under the law of the gospel, no inferior power can alter, limit, increase or 
diminish ; no one man or multitude of men can give away the gospel rights 
of another, or of themselves. No body of men are obliged to institute a 
church of Christ, and no man afterwards is obliged to enter a church which 
the rest may institute ; but if a church of Christ is instituted they are obliged 
by the laAVS of it ; and if it be one of those laws that all things shall be de- 
termined by a majority of voices, his assent is afterwards comprehended in 
the resolutions of that majority. This liberty that every man has of voting 
his own sentiments, under the laws of the gospel, does not give the 
liberty to a seditious majority to change and overthrow the form of govern- 
ment. For sedition implies an unjust and disorderly opposition to that form 
of church government which is legally established by Christ; and when it is 
thus made, such as enter into it are obliged to obey the laws of it. And 
those who so far forget themselves as to erect extraneous societies, and call 
them churches, act according to their own wills, and not the will of Christ. 
Those who thus act take not their laws from Christ's institution, and their 
rights and duties cannot be limited or measured by the Scriptures. And 



284 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; 

whoever thus departs from Christ's teachings violates the most sacred laws 
of Christ's churches on earth. 

Therefore we challenge but one example out of all the history of the 
apostolic churches, where those churches, or a majority of them, did meet, 
or after the multiplication of the churches they could meet to organize such a 
church as we now plead against. On the contrary the plain Scripture 
account shows that they did not, and afterwards could not meet to set up this 
government, and agree upon the principles of its order, or upon whom the 
right of ruling should fall. This was a great omission on the part of the 
apostles, in failing to set up a suitable ecclesiastical polity for these huge 
bodies for government, and thus laying the churches under the danger and 
necessity of being afterwards pulled around and lorded over by any that 
should insolently aspii'e to rule them. 

Is it not more reasonable and Scriptural, that tliis universal church was 
never thought of, inasmuch as not a word is said about it in the record ? 
The silences of the gospel are as obligatory as its utterances. If this be so, 
how is it possible that any such a polity can be established, and that any one 
man or a privileged class of men can make themselves lords of the churches 
to Avhom Christ had given the liberty of governing themselves ? If these 
great things be not determined by a definite law or example in the Scriptures, 
is not the invasion of these sacred rights the most outrageous injury that can 
be done to a divine institution ? The liberty which Baptists contend for in 
these matters is granted by Christ to every local church in its own proper 
person, in such a manner as may be useful to the individual in an individual 
church as was exercised by the primitive churches, and not by the vast multi- 
tude of Christians as before stated which never did meet since the first church 
was instituted, and never could meet afterwards to receive the benefits from it. 

It agrees with all reason that Christ should establish the local church as 
his greatest prerogative, and that it should be alone the exclusive seat of 
church power on earth, and should depend alone upon his supreme authority. 
It is a great honor and distinction to be a freeman in Christ Jesus, and have 
superadded to this, membership in one of his judicatories on earth, with an 
equal right, together with that membership, to rule the body and be 
accountable to none but Christ, its great founder. If it be laudable to re- 
joice in that liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and it all be his free 
gift, then to belong to a church with all the privileges thereof, whereby as 
Christians we come to have a property in this free institution, is also a great 
prerogative. These churches of freemen are not only the objects of Christ's 
governments on earth, in respect to the seat of its power, but they are the 
recipients of the privileges thereof, and unto them, as individuals, the grant 
was primarily made, and unto them the benefits accrue. As in civil bodies 
that are the seats of government, the privileges and benefits of having a 
government respects principally the whole people themselves, and not the 
officers only ; and therefore the authority for the organization of these bodies 
are called constitutions of a state, or charters of a town, and not those of the 
governor, or mayor of those bodies incorporate. 



OR, THE COMMON? LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 285 

While in such a government the main act of incorporation falls upon the 
local city as the seat of power, it also falls upon the officers named therein, 
and the power given is in them, and for them alone, by one and the same 
charter. So correspondingly the Scripture charter falls upon the local 
church taking in the officers thereof after they shall have been chosen by the 
people to fill them. The promise of Christ's blessing and presence is made to 
the local church that is the place of government. I will he present in the midst 
of you, says Christ. The efficacy of this government depends upon a special 
blessing, and this promise of a blessing is always the companion of his own 
local institution. As an institution of Christ is anything set up, or ordained 
by him that has an efficacy beyond the mere thing itself, so no organization, 
or act of government, but such as are instituted by Christ, has the promise 
of a special blessing, nor can it be in the hands of any other than such as 
Christ has given the promise unto. So all is likewise confined within that 
seat or jurisdiction he has appointed ; and upon this ground he promises to 
be specially present with his ministers who act within the lawful bounds of 
their calling. 

In settling up this divine institution, it as much belongs to Christ's 
power and prerogative to set out the jurisdiction, as to the limits thereof, as 
it was to found the institution itself. Because the greatness and worth of 
these divine prerogatives does more or less depend upon the extent of this 
jurisdiction, and these blessings accordingly result to the edification and 
benefit of the members as these things are definitely settled and ordered. 

Then again, it is in perfect keeping with the dignity of Christ's church on 
earth that those who belong to it should owe it to the wisdom and foreordina- 
tion of Christ himself, as nothing concerns the substance of these privileges 
more than the satisfaction of knowing that the church be from Christ. Take 
any profane body, if it be a privilige to have certain rules prescribed, and 
officers named, and certain acts of government, as they may do, maintained, 
then it is as much important to have a limit to its jurisdiction among them, 
as it is to have them incorporated. If this were not done, their incorpora- 
tion would be no better than a nullity. The benefit and enjoyment of all 
privileges depend upon the bounds set to them, w^hich left undetermined, as 
certainly the limits of this supposed church universal was left, the privilege 
is impaired and destroyed. And if so much depends upon this, should he 
not appoint aU these great things, who is the author, giver and bestower of 
this government himself, to whom these bodies should wholly owe it, and not 
leave it to the discretion of those who have no authority to arrange it ? 

There is nothing against which men's consciences are so apt to be obsti- 
nate and rebellious as an undue exercise of a power to which they are not 
entitled, for men are likely to quarrel at nothing more than the right of 
authority in those who execute it, and especially to the exercise of ecclesias- 
tical government. Baptists have ever asked the question: "What authority 
have you to judge the Christian world unless you can show from Christ the 
whole world or a part of it, and a definite part, is within the limits of your 
jurisdiction? Nothing has done more violence to the cause of Christ and has 



286 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDENCE ; 

brought more darkness and misery into tlie world than this confusion of juris- 
diction in matters that belong purely and simply to the local churches of Christ. 
This centralized system of church government has given to Catholics, Epis- 
copalians, Methodists and Presbyterians an importance which nothing else 
could give. They themselves often say that an Ecumenical Council, a General 
Conference or a General Assembly is the church. To them as well as to all 
others who have departed from Bible church government, and who desire 
to enjoy, at one round, the glory and grandeur of ecclesiastical establishments, 
this is, doubtless, very agreeable and a source of much pride. It is brilliant 
and gaudy, as centralism always is, and naturally flatters the vanity of 
those belonging to them, because they can see nothing of these systems but 
these overgrown bodies. Ecclesiastical absolutism and centralism strike the 
eye and strive to do so ; Baptist church polity is likewise brilliant, but it is 
brilliant in its long line of history, and must be studied in its historical and 
scientific development to be appreciated. 

There is no greater nullity than a deficiency of right, nor a greater defect 
than that of a want of jurisdiction. Paul writes a severe accusation against 
the Corinthians on this very account when he says : For what have I to do 
to judge them also that are without f Doycnot judge them that are within? 
This was a duty belonging to them, and thus he convinces them of their 
neglect of duty in that they neglected to discipline an ofiender who was with- 
in and under their own jurisdiction. And so far as this discipline was not 
managed by that local church where Christ had placed it, it could not be 
done at all. And so much of the responsibility and blessing depended upon 
them, as upon the true form of government that Christ had appointed that 
was to be administered by the church, and not by one man, or by several 
men in ofiice. It is certain that Paul laid this duty at the door of the church 
at Corinth, within whose jurisdiction Christ had placed it, and so had the 
promise of his presence to accompany that power, provided it was adminis- 
tered by them. The edge of the sword of discipline becomes dull if placed 
in hands not designed by Christ to use it ; and there is certainly more power 
in one excommunication in the primitive times, and in the primitive way, 
than in all since, by the church universal, because it was not placed in their 
hands to do it, as having no jurisdiction to execute it. 

This confusion of ecclesiastical jurisdiction was most forcibly illustrated in 
the late trial here at the national capital, of the learned Dr. Briggs by what 
is called The General Assembly of Presbyterians. This gentleman was 
charged with heresy. Now heresy is said to bear the same relation to the 
religion and polity of a church that treason does to the sovereign power of a 
nation. In that celebrated trial the whole contention was as to whether the 
Synod of New York, that had already passed upon his case, finding him not 
guilty, had the right to try him or whether this General Assembly had juris- 
diction, as a high court of appeals. For ten days they debated this grave 
question, leaving the main fact of heresy, or no heresy, in the background. 
After the question of jurisdiction had been argued by learned lawyers and 
still more learned divines, it was decided in favor of the Assembly, which 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 287 

found him guilty. It was not so much a question of heresy as it was one of 
jurisdiction. In fact to a Baptist, as a looker-on, the greatest heresy about 
the whole matter was that the case should have been taken away from the 
local body or church of which he was a member, and suffered to be thus thrust 
upon a whole denomination to shake and disturb it from centre to cir- 
cumference, and thus make a farce of apostolic church government, by over- 
leaping the limits set by Christ and his apostles ; forgetting that these gen- 
eral assemblies cannot meet for acts of government by virtue of any charter 
given first to the church universal. 

It is often said by those belonging to other systems of church government 
that the first churches, though but single congregations having but single 
pastors in and over them, wliich exercised all acts of government, cannot be 
taken as patterns for churches of this day, because the first churches out of 
necessity were compelled to do that which when multiplied they cannot now 
do. This is not a reasonable argument, nor does it correspond with the facts 
of the case ; if this be true the apostles should not have organized any of 
these converted- communities into churches, but have deferred their organiza- 
tion until they had gotten enough suitable material in the various cities and 
places to make up a presbytery or conference, and then have gone about 
forming one of these bodies out of the several local communities. Had this 
kind of a church been authorized by Christ, the apostles doubtless would 
have taught the early disciples to have waited until they could thus make 
up this kind of a church in its fulness at first. 

To assume that the first church at Jerusalem was the basis of the univer- 
sal church and an example for aU the rest, and that it was defective as hav- 
ing been founded upon an extraordinary necessity only, is below the dignity 
of a divine institution. But if this first church had in itself complete power 
and within itself constituted a synod or conference it serves as much for 
Baptists as for others, and indeed for us first ; because this church as one 
congregation existed first, and they were as much an ordinary church at first 
as at last, and endowed with the same sufficiency of inherent power. And 
if it were a model of an ordinary synod or conference, it will not serve our 
Presbyterian or Methodist friends at all first or last for the ground of their 
church government ; for by the time the apostles had finished their work 
and passed off the stage of action they had estabhshed a hundred such 
churches and all after the same pattern. 

It is certain that those churches that the apostles left were as perfect 
churches, as to government, the first day they were instituted, as afterwards 
they could be supposed to be. Returning to Paul's favorite similitude of a 
natural body, if nature at first begets a perfect child, with all parts perfect, 
it may be small and undeveloped and may grow in stature, but all the 
natural parts it has when a man it had when a child. And although it may 
grow in stature it does not grow in perfection, nor is it defective in any of its 
natural powers when a child. And besides if you join a thousand children 
together they will not make one man, neither by putting that many men 
together will it make a still larger man. 



288 A TREATISE UPOl^ BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; 

There is no reasonable man who has intelligence enough to examine and 
understand the form of government cast upon the apostolic churches but 
will say that their polity was complete in themselves and absolutely had 
nothing to do with outside churches. The polity of these churches was 
either entire and perfect, and it is theirs to retain it, or they had liberty to 
cast it off and to form anew. If they had this liberty then Christ has insti- 
tuted two forms of church government, and made two seats or subjects of 
entire church power for men to cast themselves into which they please. 
That is to say, two ordinary patterns, one of a local church and the other of 
a synod or conference over many. But that Christ should have left the 
government of his churches so indefinite cannot be imagined ; not only be- 
cause it is impossible that one of them could be better than the other, but 
because the one is vastly different from the other in point of stability and 
fixedness, and besides the one completely destroys the other. As, however, 
this unscriptural and uninstitutional multitude has no organism, it is, as has 
been stated, necessarily led by a few or one man, and thus we meet in eccle- 
siastical history with the invariable result, that virtually one man rules 
where absolute power of the membership is believed to exist. And after a 
short interval that one person openly assumes all power, sometimes, however, 
observing certain forms by w^hich the power of the membership is believed to 
have been transferred to him. They have already been familiar wrth the 
idea of absolute priestly power — they have been accustomed to believe that 
w^herever ecclesiastical power resides, it is absolute and complete, so that it 
does not appear strange to them that the new ecclesiastical monarch, whether 
priest, bishop or pope, should possess the unlimited power which by the law 
of the gospel actually resided in the local church. With them there is but 
one step from the church to a ruler of the church. 

When we admit 'that all local churches that have within themselves a 
complete government may retain that government within themselves as the 
first subjects of it as agreeing with the patterns of the apostolic churches 
what sensible church would subject itself to be governed by a foreign power? 
If these churches were incomplete to have acted in an arbitrary way and 
have retained their rights and powers within themselves, as in the primitive 
times they did, would have been unlawful. Being a new change of govern- 
ment there must have been examples for it in the Scriptures, and that form 
of government by synods and conferences should be as clear as the polity of 
the churches was before the change. It is impossible there should be two 
rights to the same power, whereof the one is incompatible with the other ; for 
if the local church can claim that the seat of government rests in them then 
the synod or conference cannot, for it is impossible that both should exercise 
it. There may be different powers and interests in the same organic body, 
but there cannot be a power in one body to be exercised in a certain way, 
and also the same power in a greater to be exercised in a different way and 
for a different purpose. 

It cannot be successfully said that this lumping of many churches together 
and generating a government suitable to that association is a strengthening 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 289 

of the power of the local church to administer its aifairs. That would be the 
same as to say that the father of a family that ruled as a father before, and 
had full authority so to do, should have his power committed into the hands 
of other fathers of families together with himself. Could this be said to be a 
strengthening of his power as the ruler of his family, or rather would it not 
be a losing of it? Apply this argument to the presidents of colleges. Would 
not these learned gentlemen consider that it was a weakening of their gov- 
ernment, for by this they lose theirs as presidents. Neither would it help the 
matter by injecting in it a little of the Baptist idea and rule by a majority 
vote, for in many cases they would utterly lose their power to govern at all, 
it being thus swallowed up by the greater number against them. So it would 
be in ecclesiastical matters in case of bishops and ruling elders, the will and 
power of local churches would be overruled when the votes of the pastors 
happened to be against the interest or wishes of their own churches. 
Certainly the government of the churches could not be strengthened by 
taking the power out of their own hands and doing their own acts for them, 
thus destroying ^the church's own power to govern itself. 

If it be said that it makes all churches equal, still this must be admitted, 
but how does it make them equal ? It makes them all equal in subjection 
and not in freedom, as they were instituted by Christ. It would be the same 
kind of equality that incorporated cities that had full powers of government 
under their respective charters giving up their powers to a combination of 
incorporated towns together which would be a lowering of their dignity and 
a surrender of their powers and all be brought into a condition of subjection, 
but what equahty there could be in it we cannot see. 

If in the apostolic times when churches began to be thus multiplied, a 
church that before had full ecclesiastical government entire in itself, began 
anew to associate with others for government, either this association took up 
the whole -power and jurisdiction, and left each local church with no part of 
it, else there was a parting and a dividing of that power with which Christ 
invested them. If all that power was taken away, let that be affirmed, and 
a Scriptural authority for it be shown. Let this hierachical church choose 
and ordain all their ministers and deacons, let them receive and excommuni- 
cate members, and do all other acts of government. If church power be 
divided and parted, either it must be arbitrary, and if so, then they arbi- 
trarily and unlawfully parted with that v/hich was once given them by Christ, 
or else they should have parted with all as by a command from God. In 
other words ecclesiastical government should not be entirely destroyed in 
order to round out a theory. 

It is very evident that if the local churches had any lawful right and 
authority in their own local affairs by virtue of the first form of government 
set up over them, that right and authority was taken away from them and 
invested in the hierarchical church that is aristocratical in its nature. In a 
government ruled purely by the local membership if that government be 
transformed into an aristocracy or an episcopacy we must say that the for- 
mer government is overthrown and the membership dethroned, and the 
19 



290 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

episcopacy enthroned, and it will be entirely a new form of polity. Can it 
be said that a local church that is thus despoiled of its rights by being asso- 
ciated with others, is not wronged in its rights ? For if at first the charter 
of the local churches should be that they must be ruled by themselves, and 
their own officers, whom they themselves had chosen, certainly it would be a 
new form of government, to surrender that power, and to come under the 
rule and dominion of other churches. And if there were a family the father 
thereof who had entire government, and when families increased they all 
joined in a family combination to rule all private family affairs, when the 
father ruled, and of divine right ought to rule alone, surely this would be a 
new system of government that would completely subvert and overthrow the 
other. Would not colleges think so, though associated into a university ? 
If colleges should have the privilege of receiving, discipHning and expelhng 
students invested in their own hands, as certainly it should, to be a good and 
proper government, if aU the jurisdiction and control which they had when 
alone, or if a part of it only should be exercised in common ; this would be 
a change of government, and a ridiculous disfigurement of all educational 
rule and order. And so it would be in the case of churches. 

There must, therefore, be a way of proceeding judicially, or extra-judicially 
in the institution of these overgrown and disjointed systems of church 
government, or else the divine laws of Christ, and these societies that- should 
subsist by them, cannot stand, and the ends for which such governments are 
instituted, together with the governments themselves, should be overthrown, 
and the good people who are in, and adhere to them, should be induced to 
return to the simpHcity of the gospel plan of church polity. They are good 
philosophers and able divines, not well up however in the science of govern, 
ment, who think that this visionary polity can create a right in those who 
have it not by a divine right, or that the Scriptures can be used as a justi- 
fication to those who overthrow the law, and give opportunity of erecting an 
ecclesiastical judicatory not authorized by the Scriptures. For before any 
assembly of men can become the formal seat of ecclesiastical government there 
must be an orderly union under a covenant to obey Christ's laws, for he 
has in this institution granted the power of the keys only to believers thus 
united into the state of a local church. 

If it were the work of the apostles in their missionary tours to organize 
the churches into diocesan and presbyterian governments, yet none of them at 
any time wrote to them in such a state. They wrote not to the church of Judea, 
of Asia, or of Crete, but to the churches, naming them as local organic 
bodies, thus emphasizing local self-government. Under the old law God set 
up a church government to suit that of a kingdom, and really suitable to the 
governments that we now see in nations barring its religious nature. And 
any religious government under the gospel erected in imitation thereof is 
diocesan and presbyterian in its nature and therefore called //le elements of the 
world, unto which the churches under the new law are not to be conformed. 
Under that form of pohty which our brethren would imitate, there was a wor- 
ship and rule for the whole nation, and as such it was a government to which 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 291 

all could appeal, but there is not a trace of that kind of a polity found in the 
New Testament. So under the gospel we find no examples where ecclesias- 
tical government ever fell upon this kind of a church, on the contrary, it is 
very clear to the reasonable inquirer after truth that all power fell upon 
the local churches, as we see in every example that local churches exercised 
that power without let or hindrance, as having been set up by the apostles 
themselves. This conclusion is evidently so clear that he who would try to 
prove to the contrary, is forced to resort to the analogies between the Jewish 
regime and that of the gospel to justify their polity. 

This is further shown by their efforts to have their systems conformed to 
the government of cities, taking in the villages, as those who are for episco- 
pacy contend, and as presbyterians also insist with the exception that they 
contract the system to the extent of a city within itself, and so make a 
classical church, or synod. To assert either view is a perversion of apostolic 
church government, as unavoidable absurdities would follow. To set up 
such a government would be to make a secular or profane government the 
pattern of the ecclesiastical; and then the same degrees of officers would 
arise, those superior and those inferior, that we see in secular govern- 
ments, would of necessity be the rule, as they would make out the evangelist 
Titus, in the isle of Crete, with subordinate pastors under him. Now Christ 
never shaped his spiritual government, under the new law, unto the political, 
nor the bounds thereof; for Christ has not set material limits to his spiritual 
rule on earth. The bounds of an apostolic church is limited to so many as 
can meet in one place, being united under a convenant, into an organic body 
for worship and the administration of the ordinances and discipline. Politi- 
cal governments go by the bounds of the soil ; so does the episcopal and 
presbyterian form of government ; but not so under the apostolic system. It 
is circumscribed only by the Providence of God. All that live within the 
limits of such a place, because they are of the soil, fall under the same 
political government. But what reason is there that they should be under 
the same spiritual rule ? The doctrine of the old law writers of meum et 
tuum — mine and thine — has no place in true church government. If the 
pattern of the churches were to be conformed to the city governments, then 
as the city sometimes takes in the suburban places, the local residences 
round about, so the churches should not be conformed to the limits of the 
city, but extend to the whole province ; as bishops contend for a diocesan 
church, and if a province why should it not extend and take in the whole 
world, as we find neither a precept nor an example in the Scriptures to go by. 
IMiuisters should be content with a little less dominion over the earth than 
its Maker. 

If this were an ordinance of God to conform church government to cities 
then New York would make one church, because it is but one city. And in 
some places where there are two cities contiguous as New York and Brook- 
lyn built up together that have the priviliges of cities, the latter place in 
itself being an immense city, might challenge the right to supremacy, or at 
least claim an equal right with her somewhat larger sister, and then the 



292 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPKUDENCE ; 

doctrine of meum and tuum would come in and there would arise a conflict 
of jurisdiction, unless we had an example or precept by which to settle a 
contest over two separate jurisdictions. And then suppose that these cities 
or provinces, where these diocesan and other forms of governments are set up, 
should decay and fall away to so smaU a number of inhabitants that there 
should be but one local church left. In that case what would become of the 
diocesan governments of the several cities? What kind of a church and 
government would be left standing? Nothing more, nor less, than a com- 
mon, little, ordinary Baptist church round the corner, provided there was a 
oneness of will, faith and practice among them and that in strict harmony 
with the Scriptures. No doubt it would be just such a church as Paul, Titus 
and all the other apostles and evangelists set up in the beginning of the 
gospel. 

It is evident that the reason that Paul gave directions to ordain elders in 
every city, was because the gospel was first preached in the cities, so that 
they might leaven the country places. And the apostles when they wrote to 
the local church of the chief city as being more eminent, not because that 
was the mother church, as our Episcopal friends would say, or a classical 
church as Presbyterians contend, but because the epistles might be addressed 
to others. And thus when they wrote to the churches of Syria and Galatia, 
they wrote especially to Antioch, and when they would give their letters a 
general significance they say : A7id to all that call upon the name of the 
Lord. If many churches in a city had been formed into one church they 
might, and doubtless would have been distinguished by the names of some 
of the political or corporate rulers, as now many of our churches in the cities 
are called after the streets upon which they are located, and as John, in his 
spiritual vision, wrote to the Angel of the church at Ephesus, or as one 
writing to the Mayor and Aldermen of a corporate city when writing to the 
whole corporation in their names. If the churches were organic units, and 
were of one fellowship, it is very reasonable that they should be addressed as 
one church, as at Colosse and Corinth, and to show their unity and make 
their worship more solemn and have more of the assistance of the Holy 
Spirit ; and why strain an argument to make them many churches, when 
there was no necessity for but one ? The elders at Ephesus lived in, and 
were identified with the church at that place by way of assistance to the 
local church in acts of worship, and were over the whole flock. And if 
churches were multiplied in those cities each church had its separate organi- 
zation framed after the same pattern that the first church was, having like 
need of ofiicers with, the same privileges. And besides they are not called 
elders of Ephesus, but elders of the church at Ephesus. The care and duty 
of elders that were ordained in a city to evangelize was to be extended even 
to the right of forming country churches as well as in the cities, otherwise 
how could the gospel have been spread ? And yet this is one of the episco- 
pal grounds for a diocesan church, and a reason for the rearing up of episcopal 
church government. 

The way of organizing churches under the gospel being uniform, accord- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 293 

ing to Christ's institution, both in the country and cities, it is certain that 
the same uniform patterns were suited to the one as to the other. And, there- 
fore, a church in the country may as well be made the pattern for the con- 
stitution of the churches in a city, as a church in a city, for framing one in 
the country. But Christ being not the author of confusion has framed but 
one form of church government, and has framed this divine institution in 
such a way as was uniform and will serve both. And the certain rule for 
both maybe found in the examples of all the apostolic churches, without one 
exception, set up by those apostles and evangelists ; and as many as dwelt 
together, and could conveniently meet in one place, became one church, hav- 
ing its own officers and was complete in itself. Now we all agree that Christ 
might have made this kind of church government a pattern to be followed, 
as he took a family government under the old law, and extended the 
bounds of the family as they grew, yet that would not be a binding law to 
the extent that every family should thus extend itself into a governing 
power, or a nation, thus creating confusion where order was sought. 

When we apply this visionary and might he argument to church govern- 
ment, there is no length to which we may not run. If Titus and the other 
evangelists did become ecclesiastical rulers by virtue of their having power 
given them to ordain elders in every city and church, ministers who then, 
and have since assisted in the ordination of elders ought likewise to become 
rulers ; for if this made Titus bishop of Crete why not allow all pastors 
whose duty it becomes to assist in the ordination of ministers to become 
bishops, and ex-officio rulers of cities and provinces according to this episco- 
pal idea. But if this power to become bishops of whole cities and provinces 
was given to the apostles by virtue of their apostleships, which Baptists deny, 
or if after they passed away others usurped a power which they never had 
inherently in themselves, or derivatively from the apostles, we may fancy 
that a kingdom and rulership so gotten may, and ought to escheat for w^ant 
of an heir ; but no doubt our Episcopal friends will conclude that there is no 
need of seeking lawful heirs or successors to the apostles if usurpation can 
confer a divine right to succession ; and he who gets the power they claim 
into his hands ought to be reputed the rightful heir and successor of the 
apostles, whether they can from the Scriptures prove it or not. 

We may justly ask how any one or more of those elders, ordained in the 
primitive times, came to be possessed of more power than their brethren since 
all must have derived the same power by virtue of their ordination ? They 
certainly were all called alike by the Holy Spirit, and the churches electing 
them, as Barnabas and Matthias were elected, and were ordained by the 
church by the laying on of the hands of the ministry, as the Scriptures tes- 
tify. But to what purpose is it to inquire which one of them has the most 
power, or how he came by it, when some of them, less loyal than the rest, in 
the early ages of the churches, not including, however, the apostolic age, re- 
belled against the rightful government of the local churches, which Christ 
set up, and by usurpation got a visionary dominion over some of these local 
bodies ? But we may certainly conclude that whatever the powers and rights 



294 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUKISPEUDENCE ; 

were that belonged to those early apostles and evangelists they were inherent 
in them, and could not be conferred on any other by those to whom alone it 
was given by the Holy Spirit and the local churches ; for it proceeded from 
that source alone, and there it rested, and so rests to this day. The duty 
we owe to our parents does not arise from an usurped or delegated power, but 
from our birth derived from thera. And it is as impossible for any man to 
usurp, or receive by the grant of another, the right of a father over us, as for 
him to become, or pretend to be made our father by another, who did not 
beget us. Likewise it is as much impossible for any minister to usurp, or 
receive by the pretended right or grant of another the authority of a ruler 
over the churches, as for him to become a ruler by another who had no such 
power to confer it, if he can be presumed to have had such power himself. 

To institute a bishop to rule over a whole city, or a State, is as much non- 
sense as to institute a father to rule over a family, but if any should be 
chosen to do the work of a bishop, to such as have none, and are so ignorant 
and stupid as not to be able to elect their own bishop, none ought to be 
thrust over them without their own consent, as orphans of a certain age, 
under the law, are permitted to choose their own guardians, till they come 
of age. If this right ceases under the free gospel dispensation, why all right 
ceases, and men have no use for that freedom wherewith Christ has made 
them free. Would it not be ridiculous to attribute the title and authority of 
a ruling minister to the word bishop, which has none in it inherently or 
derivatively, and signifies no more than an ordinary minister of the gospel, 
whose duty Christ made it to be the shepherd over a little flock, or assembly 
of believers ? Such men thus instituted cannot be bishops of a whole city 
unless they be over the whole flock, the black and estray sheep as well as 
the white and tame ones in the sheepfold ; for a sheep is a sheep although he 
be wandered away over the mountains cold and bleak. And if any sheep be 
overtaken by the shepherd he ought to have power to run him down and 
force him to be of the fold nolens volens. And any meek and well-bred 
sheep that has been thus saved from the teeth of wild beasts and ravenous 
wolves, ought to return to the sheepfold and be tame, gentle and obedient; 
and this, though improperly, may be called an adoption and forced domina- 
tion of the Lord's flock. 

Under this aristocratic system of church government the first pastorates 
are acquired by the favor of the presiding bishops and of successful 
favoritism of other high church dignitaries, and transmitted by a sort of 
hereditary right, other ministers of equal or greater merit are reduced to and 
often kept in lower stations. The severity and shocking extremes of the 
system may not have been noticed by those living under it, but it is clearly 
observable by outsiders. But even at the present day, whoever has closely 
and impartially observed the operations of the two systems in the United 
States, has not failed to notice, and will not refuse to admit, the greater 
justice, and the greater worth and merit here claimed for Baptist 
chur<^h polity. In this fre6 and independent system it is the rule rather 
than the exception that some of our greatest ministers without any such 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 295 

influences achieve the very highest distinctions and the very best pastorates 
through intrinsic merit alone ; while in the universal church system, it is so 
organized, and moves so entirely in aristocratic grooves that nine in ten of 
the really pious and talented ministers are as completely excluded as if 
laboring under legal disabilities, provided they be not the especial favorites 
of the bishops. They labor under these drawbacks naturally and cannot 
help themselves. The result is that there are many of those under this 
regime who have thrust upon them these highest places of honor and trust, 
who either could never have entered them under Baptist church govern- 
ment, or, being once found in them, would be quickly left out of them. It 
needs hardly to be added that these are, for the most part, the same persons 
who persistently assert that there is no merit in Baptist church government 
and no talent among those who are chosen by election to preach the gospel 
of Christ. 

This view of the powers and duties of the Christian ministry corresponds 
exactly with the nature of primitive church government. There is no better 
way, and indeed there is no other way, to find out the true nature of this 
ministry in the New Testament than to notice the various examples of those 
churches in action, or so to speak, in governmental operation, without which 
it is impossible to discern the will of Christ. These examples of the churches 
set up by the apostles and put in motion, we may safely take as the com- 
mands of Christ, as well in matters to be done as to be believed, one step 
beyond which Baptists are forbidden to go. One of the great subdivisions 
of the New Testament is called the Aets of the apostles, and the main pur- 
pose the Holy Spirit had in moving those inspired apostles to record those 
acts and examples was that they might serve as precepts to us in ascertain- 
ing the will of Christ, the founder of the churches. And while they do not 
enter into the minutia of these ministerial functions, and do not give 
Baptists -an express authority for every indifferent thing we do, yet the 
general and fundamental rules are discernible which, if Ave can make out, 
is enough for us. 

There is no mention of these primitive churches except in allusion to them 
as independent organic units, in that common-sense way in which the 
churches constituted by the apostles were distinguished one from another ; 
and in no one single instance are they ever alluded to as an associational or 
classical church charged with the power of choosing a minister. In the very 
first mention of the churches in the gospel they are used in the sense of 
independent churches, then had the churches rest throughout all Judea 
and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified. It was during this rest that 
Peter took occasion to visit them and passed throughout all quarters, doing, 
not the work of a ruler of the churches or a pope, but the ordinary work of 
an evangelist visiting the saints at Lydda. From here the apostle arose and 
went to Joppa where another local company of converts were assembled. 
He went up and down where these local churches were scattered, in cities or 
villages, and are in one uniform respect called churches. For the use of 
this term wherein the wi iters of the Scriptures involve them all collectively 



296 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

is similar, and means the same kind of cliiirclies. Now is it imaginable 
that throughout all these regions, or quarters, the churches whereof it is 
spoken could all be organized into conferences or a synod such as we now 
see among us? If there ever was a time in the history of Christianity, by 
reason of the fewness, weakness and scattered condition of the churches that 
such an hierarchical form of government should be extended over them with 
rulers to govern, it was then. 

When it is said that these churches had rest and were edified, can it be 
that the writer could mean these churches as united into an assembly or con- 
ference of churches such as meet now to make ministers and to appoint 
ministers over churches without their consent, to exercise discipline and to 
make laws to govern the churches ? Rather did it not mean that these 
churches w^ere each enjoying rest in the Hberty of assembling in their respec- 
tive church capacities, worshipping God according to the dictates of tlieir 
own consciences and all the other means of edification ? How can an asso- 
ciational church, if there could be such a thing, edify or be edified ? Can 
they assemble all at one time and place ? Have they ever so assembled ? 
They must do so to be edified ; for this is one of the very reasons for the 
organization of the local churches, it being the greatest and only means by 
■which they can be comforted and edified ; and the enjoyment of these bles- 
sings in rest is that which is the greatest outward mercy and privilege which 
Christians can enjoy and can only be enjoyed in local independent churches. 
When in the same connection it is said that the churches were multiplied^ 
did they multiply in synods and conferences? or in local independent 
churches, fixed in their own respective governments and worship ? 

Now as the churches were in those regions round about multiplied where 
Peter and the other apostles preached, so it must be supposed that these 
churches were set up in the country as well as in the cities. And is it not 
visionary as well as silly to think that the early disciples and believers should 
leave their callings and business to come up to the cities to make confer- 
ences and general assemblies to elect and ordain ministers to rule them, or 
that there were only enough converted in the cities as to make these bodies 
there ? Certainly there could not be classical churches here, but independ- 
ent local churches, for it is ordaining of elders, or ministers to those churches 
that is mentioned, and not associating of many churches into one presbytery 
or conference ; but there is something directly opposite, the organization of 
independent churches, and ordaining of elders in them apart from any con- 
sultation with outside churches. It is true there must have been a sufiicient 
number of separate churches with their respective officers supposed before an 
associational church could have been made up. But where is there a single 
example in all these sacred writings or a precept where such a church was 
organized for ruling purposes even after the multiplication of a great many 
churches? And we dare not presume it. We dare not go one step bej^ond 
these examples. If we do, apostolic ecclesiastical government is destroyed. 
These churches being fixed in their several localities it must be in a congre- 
gational way that they ordained officers as the Holy Spirit called, and did 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 297 

every other act -wbich is annexed to cliurch sovereignty, and lawful to be 
done, their own entire government being inherent in the local churches. 
And such were called churches, endowed with their own officers proper unto 
them, fixed and appointed by Christ and not appointed over them by a for- 
eign power. Christians ought to have nothing to do with any powder eccle- 
siastical outside of their own churches. They who at this day live under 
these hierarchical forms of government have surrendered their Christian lib- 
erty, and are governed by no other laws than such as their rulers see proper 
to impose. Baptists know no law to which they owe obedience but that of 
Christ, and themselves. None is or can be imposed upon us, unless by the 
gospel and by ourselves. We measure our rights and duties according to 
our own interpretation of the law, and for our own safety. Our Baptist 
ancestors were made free by the law of the gospel, and, as the best provision 
they could make for us, they left us that liberty entire, with the best laws 
and the best form of church government the world ever saw to defend it. 
It is no way impaired by the domination of a lordly priesthood. The hap- 
piness of those who have ever enjoyed this freedom from domination, and the 
misery they lie under, who have sufiered themselves to be forced or cheated 
out of it, may persuade us to think nothing too dear to be hazarded in the 
defence of it. Baptist churches have no dictatorial power over them ; and 
neither we nor our ancestors have rendered or owed obedience to any human 
laws but those of the gospel, nor to any other ministry than what we elect 
to be our pastors. We have a ministry that have a spiritual reign over 
their churches by law, and not by usurpation. Their reign and rule is from 
the law that makes them to be ministers, and we can know only from thence 
what their powders are, and how far we are to go in our obedience to them. 
Whereas, it is utterly absurd for us to seek which is the best form of church 
government, or what code of discipline and laws is most conducive to its 
perfection and permanency ; and they who have written books on ecclesias- 
tical matters to instruct the Christian w^orld how to govern themselves have 
either misspent their time, or have impiously been the means to incite the 
Christian world to rebel against and overthrow the ordinances of Christ. 
The work of the lover of truth in these matters is to hunt for those precepts 
and examples found in the Scriptures, as we have little hope of finding it 
among those who apply themselves chiefly to sophistry, as the best means to 
support popery, and incidentally the things growing out of popery. That 
which Baptists maintain, is the cause of Christian liberty which ought never 
to sufier for the want of some one now and then to review its fundamental 
principles and to restate the grounds upon which it rests. In so doing we 
ought to reject w^hatever we find that agrees not with reason, Scripture, or 
the approved apostolic examples of the first churches. 

That kind of church government instituted in the beginning of the gospel 
and ever since maintained by Baptists, is such as has been composed of many 
free and independent little republics, living cBquojure, on equal terms, every 
one retaining and exercising a sovereign power within itself. It ought to be 
a source of rejoicing that there has been a people since those primitive times 



298 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPHUDENCE ; 

that have stood up for the principles underlying this form of polity instituted 
by Christ. No disputes have ever arisen among them concerning limits and 
jurisdiction, and the like. But as our enemies have ever attempted to sow 
dissensions among us, and not having a high court to decide our controversies 
by its authority, we may sometimes be apt to fall into temporary quarrels, 
but they have never entered into contention except when some one strikes at 
the fundamental principles underlying their religious liberty. No church 
government in the world was ever more free from popular seditions and 
heresies, and has been more miraculously preserved by the hands of God. 
Although the freest and most popular government in the religious world, the 
revolts against it have been the fewest of any other religious sect ever 
established, and such as have attempted to set up and maintain governments, 
even similar to ours, have dwindled away and are becoming extinct as reli- 
gious sects, and the prayer of the Lord that they might be one will yet 
prevail. Men are subject to errors, and it is the work of the best and wisest 
to discover and amend such as their ancestors may have committed, or to add 
perfection to those things which by them were practised. This is so certain, 
that whatever we enjoy beyond the misery in which our Baptist ancestors 
lived, is due only to the liberty of correcting what was amiss in their practice, 
or evolving that which they did not know. Why then shoidd Baptists be 
reduced to the necessity so much to inquire after that which is most amcient 
in ecclesiastical government, as that which is best, and most conducive to the 
good ends to which it was directed ? As ecclesiastical governments were in- 
stituted for obtaining the truth and the preservation of religious liberty, we 
ought to seek what government was first, and what best provides for the ob- 
taining of the truth and the preservation of religious liberty. 

God who is infinitely wiser than man has ever suited his ecclesiastical 
government in all ages to the varying conditions and circumstances of the 
times in which it was to exist, and suited it himself according to what was to 
be the future . condition of his people. While worship was continued in 
families and tribes, as under the old law, there was a government and 
worship suitable to the family and to the tribe. When they grew up to be a 
nation he settled a new government upon them. When in the wilderness, a 
tabernacle only ; when fully settled under a kingly power, a temple. But 
now under the gospel the condition of his followers in nations varying in 
several ages, he has framed his churches to suit all ages through which they 
are in his providence to exist. 

If it be said that therefore when churches should multiply to a nation 
then all ecclesiastical governments should be suited unto that nation as such. 
This would be possible, and indeed suitable if whole nations would truly 
turn Christians, and all were of a oneness of will, faith and practice. But 
God in his wisdom saw that in time men would differ in regard not only to 
the religion, but the polity of the churches, and that he would have believers 
in every nation of different forms of national government, therefore he 
suited his government to his own designs. If in his providence Christ had 
foreseen that all nations being converted to him should have an established 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 299 

and fixed form of government as the Jews had, he probably wouM have 
given a church government answerable thereto. Although the church in 
the wilderness had not grown up to be a kingdom and had no local place to 
worship at, and had not come to be scattered all over the world, yet God 
foresaw what he would bring them to, did not give a government that would 
suit them when they were scattered and the Gentiles should be converted and 
brought into the fold of God. And if he had intended that there should be 
an hierarchical form of government with priests and bishops placed over them 
with power and high sounding titles, he would not have left the churches, as 
he did, in ignorance of the kind of government he designed them to have, 
but would have given law^s and examples suitable to such a polity. 

This institution of local churches, complete in themselves, suits all times 
from the beginning of the gospel and through the continuance of the gos- 
pel. It suits all nations, governments, places, the villages as well as the 
large cities, and there must be the same uniform law for all. It especially 
suits the condition of believers in Christ beiug scattered all over the world. 
Whole nations are not fit for church membership, neither those belonging 
to the universal church, owing to their diverse opinions, for the true follow- 
ers of Christ are but organic companies redeemed out of all nations. As 
therefore among the Jews when they were scattered, their government was a 
synagogue government, being local in its nature, and as that form of gov- 
ernment suited their scattered condition, so the apostolic form suits best with 
the scattered condition under the gospel dispensation. 

This whimsical fancy has caused the building up of a huge ecclesiastical 
hierarchy, and amuses and entertains the understanding of the superstitious 
with images and analogies of things never intended, and even intrudes itself 
into the domain of doctrine. Paul said they were but the shadow of things 
to come, but the body is of Christ. Now evidently the expression means a 
shadow in comparison to the churches which were then being set up. He 
set up for churches organic bodies, and the old Jewish economy was but 
shadows in comparison to the church which Paul so often compared to the 
natural body. 

Now, whenever a law that is made only for a particular reason wholly 
fails, the law itself fails, and sometimes a nettle springs up in the place of it, 
and that which was once profitable may become intolerable, and that 
which was once righteous will not be righteous still, but wholly dif- 
ferent. The rule in law is, that when a contrary reason arises, there is 
no doubt but that the law ceases ; and this is to be extended not only to the 
cases of injustice, but of uselessness ; that is, if the law becomes useless by a 
change of conditions, it has no longer a binding authority. The Jewish 
polity, priesthood and economy having been abrogated by Christ, he having 
set us free from all bondage, even of that law which God himself made and 
gave to Moses, and having alleviated the burdens of the rites and ceremonies 
incident to a national form of church government, certainly he would not 
thus relieve us of the laws of God to impose upon us the laws of man. For 
there is no such thing as Christian liberty except a comptete and entire free- 



300 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JTJEISPrvUDEXCE ; 

dom from the laws of man in church government and in doctrine set up by 
man's authority. This is rather a deliverance from bondage than a liberty, 
a rescue from an evil of another nature. 

After the abrogation of the Jewish economy the apostolic form of church 
government did either begin right, or wrong. If right, it was a divine 
institution and we can only look to the New Testament and take what we 
find there, and pattern after it and nothing else. That there is no resem- 
blance between the local churches set up by the apostles, and the associa- 
tional form of church government, is evident to every candid inquirer who 
takes the pains to study the question. What though we find in the Old 
Testament a national church with a priesthood to rule it ; we grant there 
was then such a church, but the gospel knows no such now. The apostles, 
though they had from Christ the care of all the churches, and had evidently 
in their hands a power that no set of ministers since can claim, yet they 
were but officers in local churches, and never pretended to be a college of 
bishops, much less the church itself. Many churches became one church to 
no ecclesiastic, or set of ecclesiastics in the world, but Christ, but this pre- 
tense of ministers being the church, and having power to rule the church 
would make many churches one church to a company of ministers, that 
they may govern them. That form of government is to be wholly rejected 
which will not endure a comparison with the apostolic churches, but if being 
thus compared there be no resemblance found, it cannot prevail without 
doing great violence to Christ's institution, the local churches. 

There is in this artificial conception of a universal church a destruction 
not only of local church organization and independence, but of individual 
identity and personality. Those who have assumed the origin of this kind 
of a church have regarded its existence as the necessary and formal limita- 
tion of the individual, and therefore they have assumed that each individual 
has surrendered his freedom on being enveloped into it, and has therefore 
acquiesced in the deprivation of his church rights. It is thus always with 
human associations, as the organization of a sect or party. It is necessarily 
a restriction of the individual ; but it is not the case in the institution of a 
church of Christ formed in an organic life, and it is only as the local church 
is an organic and a moral person, that freedom is realized in it, and may be 
wrought in, and with it, in its spiritual development. For it is here that 
each individual is to bring all that is in his individuality to its fresh and 
free expression. The personality and individuality of each member is to be 
so left, that each may work after his own conception of what the Scriptures 
teach him is his duty. All that which is foreign to this must necessarily 
be coercion from without and should be rejected as destructive of religious 
freedom and independence. 

The true element of a church is in the nature of its members, and its 
development and progress is in their spiritual natures. The primitive con- 
ception of a church discloses a condition in which there is the recognition 
of some common relation, and men appear as dependent upon each other 
and as seeking association with each other. They enter the church from 



OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 301 

a condition of individual isolation, and is to be regarded as a collection of 
so many units, and the life of each member is involved in every nioment 
of its existence, and none are exempt from these conditions. It has been 
received from the fathers and is to be handed down unimpaired to the chil- 
dren. It is not a confused mass, but nevertheless has an organic unity ; it 
is determined in an organic law, and constitutes an organic whole. It is 
shaped by no external force, but by an inner law. It has unity and growth 
and identity of structure. It is not thrown together in a way that cannot 
be accounted for — not the aggregation of a mass, but composed of integral 
parts of a unit, with an identity that pervades the whole. It cannot be torn 
down, and then from the debris built up again in another shape devised by 
human wit and wisdom. 

The local church is not even the continuation of the universal church, nor 
is it in its form necessarily correspondent to it. How can the plant tran- 
scend its germ, and absorb other substances ? The church in its widest de- 
velopment is still the local church and is not necessarily implanted in the 
universal whole, but it is an organism and has its seed in itself, and the con- 
dition of its growth is its own organic unity, having a oneness of will, faith 
and practice peculiar to itself. Between these two systems of church gov- 
ernment — the local and the universal — there is a gulf as wide as that which 
separated Lazarus and Dives. Some have attempted to strike a medium 
and blend the two by bridging the chasm combining a little of the one with 
a little of the other ; but oil and water will not mix, truth and error will not 
dwell together in the same house. The church does not have its origin 
even in the voluntary association of certain separate churches. This only 
transcends the limits of a local church, and does not attain to the dignity of 
a church. It does not correspond to the historical narration of the apostolic 
churches laid down in the Kecord. 

There -is involved in the conception of a universal church the idea of 
usurpation, whereas the church of the living God was not born of force. 
It is so contradictory to the conception of a church that the element of divine 
law and order disappears and there remains only the mandate of power, and 
the individuality and sacred personality of the free Christian is lost, and he 
is transformed into that of the automaton. It paves the way to the develop- 
ment of an abnormal ecclesiastical power and authority to exercise which 
requires a horde of place-hunters and priestly hangers-on who must needs be 
supported at the expense of the Lord's treasury. This has been the founda- 
tion for the most opposite schemes and speculations upon the church, and has 
mustered in its support in succeeding periods the most extreme men and 
parties, serving as the defence of the established order erected by them- 
selves and for themselves. On the other hand in the beginning of the early 
planting of the primitive churches they had to pass through a struggle for 
existence against the combined power of this universal church armed with 
the sword of secular power; but it has never been the product of violence 
on the part of those who through all these bloody ages maintained the 
supremacy of the local apostolical churches. The ligatures of this form of 



302 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

churcli government have never been strong enough to regard the weakest 
and lowliest with indifference, but the weakest and lowliest have ever 
flocked to its spiritual standard. The common people heard Him gladly can 
be said now as in the primitive times of the churches. 

This refusal to extend ecclesiastical powers beyond the limits of the local 
churches does no violence to ministerial prerogatives ; in Baptist church 
government they always do what they will, when they will to do nothing but 
that which is proper under the laws of the gospel, and it is a happy impo- 
tence in those, who through wantonness, or ignorance of those laws, desire to 
do evil by usurping authority, not to be able to effect it. By this want of 
power to erect the churches into an overgrown ecclesiastical monarchy the 
autonomy of the local church is completely preserved from ruin, the rash- 
ness of arrogant popes, bishops, presbyters and presiding elders is restrained, 
their extravagance awed and their lawlessness suppressed. When the gospel 
provides for these matters and prescribes ways by which they may be ac- 
complished, every minister who is loyal to the truth, should he have a griev- 
ance either feigned or real against a brother, the church or the denomina- 
tion seeks a remedy in a legal way, vents his passions and petty spleens in 
such a manner as brings no harm or prejudice to the cause. If his com- 
plaints against the highest church dignitary may be heard at once as well 
as against laymen, he is satisfied and looks no further for a remedy. But if 
these lordly church dignitaries will neither judge nor be judged, and there 
be no power to judge those above the law, and no orderly way to prevent or 
redress private injuries, those who are the subjects of their displeasure must 
meekly submit to them. Nothing will preserve an under-minister from the 
animosity of a jealous bishop who has the power in his hands either to make 
or unmake him. Wrongs will be done, and when they that do them cannot 
or will not be judged publicly by any tribunal known to the gospel, the in- 
jured persons become judges in their own case and executioners of their own 
sentences. 

As the Hebrew kings were not instituted by God, but given as a punish- 
ment for their sins, who despised the government that he instituted, so God 
permitted the setting up of kingly ecclesiastical governments in imitation of 
their rebellion. And as those who set up that government in Israel in oppo- 
sition to the will and command of God, came ultimately to grief, so those 
who rebelled against the ecclesiastical government of Christ by setting up a 
kingly system on the basis of the universal church, they thereby brought the 
Christian world to grief and misery. But waiving the opinions of men, it is 
good to see what we can learn from the Scriptures, and inquire if there be 
any precept or example there commanding them- or authorizing them to 
depart from the gospel plan of government, or anything from whence we 
may reasonably infer they ought to have done it, all of which, if I mistake 
not, will be found directly contrary. Bible examples are all against this 
polity. The apostles had not the name or power of popes, cardinals, or 
bishops ; they were not of the tribe to which a sceptre of rule and power was 
promised, and they did not transmit any such power to those who came after 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 303 

them, and no such power was continued by any kind of succession. What- 
ever ministerial power and dignity they have is not inherent in their persons, 
but conferred upon them by the churches that made them to be ministers ; 
not conferred that they might rule over an universal church, never erected 
by the apostles, nor that they might be exalted in glory and as lords para- 
mount, but that they might be humble ministers of good to the people of 
one church— to the flock of one sheep-fold. But whatever the dignity and 
power of ministers made in the apostles' time was, and howsoever they were 
raised to that office, it certainly differed from that we see popes, bishops and 
other church dignitaries exercising in this day and generation. 

Nothing has ever contributed more towards the union of church and 
state than the building up of a church hierarchy resembling that of the 
state, thus endowing one denomination with worldly dignity and extraordi- 
nary privileges, and thereby drawing them into the vortex of politics. When 
this is done they would have the government ordain what they conceive to 
be the maxims and doctrines of religion as laws, on the same principle that 
it makes any other enactments for the regulation of the state. It is impos- 
sible for any people, however much wedded they may be to this form of 
church government, to misunderstand the import and bearing of this influ- 
ence upon state affairs. Ministerial pomp and dignity, and the supersti- 
tious reverence with which high church officers have ever been clothed, con- 
stitutes the soul of an established religion. Other things may add lustre to 
the institution, but it is this superstition and gaudy show which gives it a 
firm hold and a commanding authority in religion. This monstrous ecclesi- 
astical hierarchy was at one time adopted in all the original American 
States, with the honorable exception of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. 
This connection between state and church was as strict as in England. But 
soon after the Revolution, this connection, in the greater part, was entirely 
dissolved-. No greater blessing could have befallen this land of liberty than 
this blow that was given to this heresy of heresies, the universal church, and 
all now acknowledge that it has been productive of great benefit to both 
church and state. Nothing could have happened more effectively to bring 
about religious harmony, and consequently a greater degree of political 
tranquillity, because afterwards there was nothing to puff up and pamper 
the pride and power of one denomination, and to provoke the hostility of 
the others. For as long as this union existed by law, those who felt them- 
selves aggrieved took an active part in all political elections, for the purpose 
of delivering themselves from the burdens which it entailed. In most of 
these States the Episcopalians, of course, were elevated to the throne of 
ecclesiastical power, in others the Congregation alists, and in others the Pres- 
byterians. But nowhere and at no time in the history of the world, in Amer- 
ica or elsewhere, have Baptists ever soiled their fair name by suffering them- 
selves to be led into this unholy alliance and to be led into this cesspool of 
political corruption. Thus, in Connecticut, where the Congregation alists, 
who boast of a strict conformity to apostolic examples and models, were the 
state church, all other denominations, including Episcopalians, Methodists, 



304 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPEUDENCE ; 

Presbyterians and XJniversalists, united themselves closely together in order 
to uproot the laws that sanctioned the alliance, and thereby acquired that 
Christian liberty to which all men are entitled, and wherewith Christ made 
them free. All this shows that the alliance between separate, free and inde- 
pendent churches, aU consolidated into a conglomerate universal church, and 
this united to a secular government, lorded over by a powerful and influen- 
tial priesthood, enables secular rulers, who have the appointment of the 
priesthood, to defy public opinion, and do whatever else they please, so long 
as they please the priesthood. The minds of men, pressed and overawed by 
the combined weight of superstition, ignorance and authority, are slow to 
find out anything wrong in a system of church government to which they 
and their ancestors have been habituated ; and any who are so ignorant as 
to believe that popes, bishops and cardinals, councils, conferences and 
synods are infallible, soon persuade themselves that these personages and 
bodies have the same right to rule the church which God has to rule the 
world. 

Hence we conclude that the doctrine of the universal church is the mother of 
the still more hideous doctrine of the union between church and state. The one 
begat the other. And were it not for the strong arm of the law which intervenes 
and declares the marriage an unlawful and an unholy wedlock the union be- 
tween church and state, even in free America, would again take place; The 
laws of God are not sufficiently strong to prevent it, so lascivious is the unholy 
mother that would bring it about. It is very clear that the principles of free 
institutions and free churches are absolutely necessary to ward off the tenden- 
cies of the universal church to run into all manner of excesses and absurdities. 
Indeed, it is doubtful if the ecclesiastical affairs of the world were entirely 
turned over to the universal church, presided over by an appointed priest- 
hood, whether the term religious liberty would have any signification, and 
whether licentiousness, which would soon prevail in the Christian world, 
involving as it must, both the letter and spirit of religion, would not disable a 
free people from upholding free institutions, which is the basal rock of reli- 
gious liberty. For if we were to destroy the free and independent local 
churches as established by the apostles, and an universal church in their 
stead set up, men would soon be converted into mere automata, religion into 
an empty ceremonial, and nothing being left to the natural impulse of the 
heart, the fountain from which liberty of conscience and freedom of action 
derive their chief strength, would soon be dried up. That religious liberty 
which Baptists have always enjoyed in its highest degree, and which they 
have always advocated, has opened a great volume of experience to the 
American people, and ultimately it will bring the Christian world to see its 
beauty and utility. 

There being no such thing, therefore, according to the law of the gospel, 
as a divine right of the ministry to the dominion over the churches, or to 
any part of them ; nor any one of them that can derive to himself a title from 
the apostles by which he can rightly pretend to be preferred before others to 
that rule, and none can be derived from nature, or from ecclesiastical usur- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 305 

pers who had none in themselves, we may justly spare any further pains of 
seeking further into that matter. But as things of the highest importance 
can never be too fully explained, it may not be amiss to observe that if the 
religious world could be brought to believe that such a right of the dominion 
of the ministry were by the law of the gospel hereditary, a great number of 
the most destructive and inextricable controversies must thereupon arise, 
which the wisdom and goodness of God never can enjoin and never intended. 
If the apostles planted the local churches and located ecclesiastical govern- 
ment in them alone, no human constitution can alter it. No length of time 
can be a defense against it. All church governments that are not conformed 
to it are vicious and void even in their root, and must be so forever. That 
which is originally unjust may be justly overthrown and discontinued. It 
being certain, therefore, that he or they who set up and exercise those huge 
governments have no right to rule them ; that there is no one man or set of 
men to whom it belongs, and no one knowing who they are, there is no one 
man among the ministry who has not as good a title to it as any other. He 
that has no part in such a government cannot exercise supreme power, for 
he neither has that which Christ ordained, nor can he show a title to that 
which he enjoys from the original prerogative of the gospel from whence it 
can only be derived. 

Therefore, it is difficult for any man, without the spirit of prophecy, to 
tell what all this will produce. All these hierarchical forms of church 
government came out of popery, and their drift is back to the source from 
whence they sprung. In coming out of this perverted organism, they sought 
only to reform church government, and by redressing what was amiss, to 
reduce it to first principles. We are not sure but that they who seem so 
well pleased with reformed popery, will not ultimately be compelled to 
submit to popery itself, for it is their tendency to reform backwards and not 
forwards. It is not improbable that when men, or a majority of them, see 
there is no medium between religious liberty and ecclesiastical slavery, 
those inclined towards liberty will seek a free and an independent church, 
and those inclined to slavery and prefer it to freedom, will drift back into 
popery from whence they came. This will not be a hard work in those 
where virtue and loyalty to the truth remain, and quite easy for those to 
drift back who prefer darkness to the light of God's truth. If love of reli- 
gious liberty be wanting, freedom of conscience cannot subsist ; but if love 
of the truth and virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power in church 
government cannot be perpetuated. Those who boast of their loyalty to the 
truth and . claim to be in the line of apostolic succession, think they give 
testimonies of it, when they submit themselves to the rule and will of one 
man, though contrary to the law from whence those qualities are derived, 
may consider, that by putting their religious masters upon illegal courses 
they make them to be veritable lords of Christ's heritage. But they who 
place the ministry within the powder of the law of the gospel, and make that 
law to be a guide to them, clothe them with true ministerial dignity. 
Whereas they who raise them above the law and allow them to acknowledge 
20 



306 

no rule but their own capricious wills, such lose their affections for the 
people which in a true minister, is their most important treasure. 

Many and hundreds are the evils which result from the erection of the 
churches into a body politic for government. Under this system of church 
government, from time immemorial, religious and political questions were so 
mixed, that to attempt to separate them was to do violence to both religious 
and political institutions. At any rate it had a tendency to undermine the 
authority of secular government, because the minds of men had constantly 
run in that channel. All this laid the foundation for internal dissensions, 
which would rend the whole community. Under this state of the case it 
was thought that the only care to give to religion and to its unity, was to 
establish it by law, and to exclude all dissenters from the privileges that 
were enjoyed by the favored sect, and in this way the unity and tranquility 
of the government was sought to be preserved, and its authority rendered 
inviolable. This blending of religion with government brought about the 
inference, that secular government could no more avoid meddling in religious 
matters, than it could avoid the duty of defending the state against foreign 
invasion. Under this idea and teaching of the universal church the pope 
and his clergy, at a very early day, become the most powerful potentates of 
the old world. Keligious dogmas, of one kind or another, exercised complete 
dominion over the minds of men ; and other secular rulers and magistrates in 
order to maintain their authority among their own subjects, believed that it 
was necessary to add to their power a very large share of ecclesiastical 
authority also. Through all the ramifications of the church and state, in 
public and private life, religious and political opinions were so interwoven 
that it seemed impossible to separate them. Thus religion becomes an 
engine of government, and from thence followed the universal introduction of 
religious intolerance. And as religion is thus erected into an affair of state, 
a further consequence takes place, that ecclesiastics very generally became 
the statesmen of the land, and moulded both religious and political opinion 
to suit themselves. 

The tendency of Baptist church jurisprudence, then, is to distribute and 
equalize ecclesiastical powers, and to withdraw religion from the arena of 
politics, to put all sects in the possession of privileges which were formerly 
usurped by one, so that it shall no longer be necessary, nor even possible, for 
government to extend its protection and legislation over some, in order to 
promote their aggrandizement. The freedom of religious thought and liberty 
of conscience which has grown up everywhere under Baptist teaching and 
preaching, while at the same time it has disarmed the civil msgistrate of a 
most dangerous authority, it has likewise created such a multitude of free 
and independent churches all over the world, that it has rendered it impos- 
sible to bestow power upon one without oppressing a very large majority of 
the people. It ought to be a great source of gratification to loveis of reli- 
gious liberty to know that in England where the incubus of an established 
religion still curses that fair land, it is in spite of, and not in consequence, 
the connection between church and state that the seeds of freedom have 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEI* 307 

taken root. It has so multiplied the number of dissenters in that country, 
as that instead of there being only a few Baptists to stem the tide, they 
stand one-half to about one-half for and against religious liberty. And it is 
not improbable that the growth of their numbers, joined to the righteousness 
of their cause and to the superior energy which they possess, may, at some 
not very distant day, brmg about the same revolution, and by the same 
means, as was accomplished just after the American revolution. It is clear, 
then, that the priesthood of either an universal, or established church, in con- 
sequence of their poAver of influencing those who follow them, may become 
an engine in the hands of government, capable of being melded as effect- 
ually as an army or navy. 

If one were to go into a machine shop and inquire -of a machinist as to 
the cause of the movements of some complicated machine, and he were to 
refer it to the divine agency we should certainly derive no satisfaction from 
the explanation ; and yet, m one sense, the solution would be correct, since 
the Supreme Being is the author of everything — of the machine as well as 
the man who made it. But no addition would be made to our knowledge. 
So it is with regard to church government ; what we want to know, and what 
we are immediately concerned in knowing, is tlie process, the human instru- 
mentality which has given rise to the institution. Christ said : Upon this 
rock I build my church, jet before his death and departure he did not build 
it, but left human individuals to do the work. If we were satisfied with the 
sweeping answer, curiosity and inquiry into those secondary laws which de- 
termine the form of the particular kind of church government that the apos- 
tles set up under the instruction of the Saviour, would be damped, and we 
should make very little effort to know .and to improve, and to preserve an 
institution which was placed so entirely beyond our reach. The advocates 
of the divine right of church government, at the same time have been the 
most idolatrous worshipers of the absolute power of church government, and 
the domination of the priesthood , while the plain and homely understand- 
ings of those who have rejected it, have set themselves vigorously to work to 
extend the blessings of rational freedom and liberty of conscience, and to 
build up a fortress against the encroachments of an universal church and a 
priestly power and domination. Covenant is the only rational basis upon 
which church government can stand. And if w^e only but turn our atten- 
tion to the study of the apostolic forms we will see that Baptists have carried 
the idea into actual practice, and have preserved the forms to this day. 

These perverted and iatitudinarian views of the church of Christ and the 
powers of the ministry and of the universal church are the results of a mis- 
conception of the true nature of the churches of Christ. This idea became 
the occasion of error when they assume to define powers as belonging to the 
churches which have not their source in the consent and organic unity of the 
local churches, and their development in ihe relation of several churches all 
united under a spiritual reign and rule of grace alone. When powers eccles- 
iastical are described as proceeding from an universal church organization 
it can be truly said they thereby make the church a great secular machine, 



308 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

and the government a necessary contrivance for making laws for its govern- 
ment, where one class of ecclesiastics institute the laws and another executes 
them. The hierarchy of the local churches will not soil itself with this de- 
based idea of a church, although the pretended successors of Peter may 
graspingly ask, with longing, for the time of the restoration of the pope to 
his temporal as well as to his spiritual rule on earth. But thanks to God, 
our great deliverer, the voice of the prophets have been lifted in exultation 
at the church's deliverance and emancipation from ecclesiastical domination 
by those who would overthrow it on earth. Universal ecclesiasticism is 
dead, but its effigies still fill the seats of power. The temple of sham has 
been destroyed and the temple of the Lord erected instead thereof. The 
church of the living God has heretofore been built in the valley of dry bones, 
shedded over with decay and corruption and rank paganism, but now under 
the dawn of a new era it is set upon the hill-top of God's eternal sunshine 
and truth, canopied with Christ's everlasting love. To his liberty-loving 
children true church polity is no longer a meaningless phrase and a mystery, 
but a living fact — the source and seat of all ecclesiastical authority on earth. 
What is heard elsewhere is but the echo of that which is real and true. The 
day of redemption is at hand ! We have seen the salvation of the Lord ! ! 
Thus I have endeavored to show that the universal church, or many 
churches joined together for government, is not and cannot be the seat of 
ecclesiastical power. They were never thus joined for the purpose of rule by 
those w^ho set them up in the outset of Christianity, and if we have the spirit 
of our predecessors we shall keep them independent of extraneous influences 
and pass oflT the stage leaving them to our successors as free as we received 
them. I earnestly contend that all ecclesiastical power whatsoever which 
resides not in a local church and proceeds not from the consent of the 
members thereof must be de facto, that is, void of all right The question 
then ought not to be, how an independent local church came to be free and 
self-governed, but how any man or body of men, outside the church, comes 
to have authority over it? For, in the early primitive churches we know 
that they were each sovereign and free, and until the right of dominion over 
them be proved and justified by those who founded them, their liberty 
subsists as arising from their nature as organic and instituted bodies under 
the laws of the gospel. Their liberty, therefore, must continue unless they 
have a right to forfeit or resign it, which cannot be conceived, for their 
charters, or church state, were not from men, but from Christ, their supreme 
head and founder, and no body of men can forfeit or resign their church 
state to one who can lawfully demand nothing, unless Christ had given them 
the power to receive it and turn it into something else foreign to its original 
design. Therefore, whatsoever Baptists have done to preserve this form of 
church polity has been by a power inherent in themselves to demand that 
liberty ivherewith Christ has made ih em free. The Scripturalness and super- 
iority of these free and independent churches over all others might be 
proved by many other arguments too numerous to mention, but I have con- 
fined, myself to only a few which I commend to the student of church polity. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 



CHAPTER XI. 

BAPTIST ASSOCIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS ; THEIPw RELATION TO THE 

CHURCHES. 

BEFORE entering upon the subject of the powers of Baptist conventions 
and associations, it will be proper in order to obtain a comprehensive 
and adequate view of the nature and essence of the powers and duties be- 
longing to them that we should first inquire into the capacities and adapta- 
tion of the churches to be influenced by these bodies. The churches indeed 
owe much to these denominational agencies. They are in a great measure 
dependent on them for the spread of the gospel at home and in foreign lands, 
— not only so, but for the contiguity, the unity and purity of the faith. 
Baptist churches join together in conventions from a sense of their own 
individual insufficiency to compass these great ends, and from a conscious- 
ness that they are but units, or elements of the whole denomination. If 
each church was able to do of itself all that is required, there would be no 
need to resort to the aid of others. Indeed they only do so now from neces- 
sity, and in those cases where they cannot effect what they wish by them- 
selves. This want induces men into churches, churches into associations, 
and associations into conventions ; until the whole denomination is to some 
extent at least, knit together into one grand social religious community. 
And the further that Christian development advances, the more extensive 
in all respects Avill be this spiritual union ; and the more extensive is this 
co-operation, the more complete is the confederation thus formed. It is 
verily believed that the reason why Baptist principles in the olden times of 
the churches did not advance more rapidly beyond their original condition 
was the reluctance with which they entered these unions. In considering 
the churches all thus united together for mutual aid, and governed by laws 
conducive both to their individual and general welfare, do we find them in 
their greatest development and perfection. 

Whatever produces want of opportunities and means to spread the gospel, 
or occasions the necessity of them, has a tendency to promote Christian 
development, whether in the church or in the convention, inasmuch as a 
feeling of want originates at once a stimulus to supply it, and stimulus leads 
to exertion, exertion to progress and progress to the spread of the gospel. A 
church that is without wants, remains in a state of passive inaction, from 
which it is stimulated only by the occurrence of a want, the effort to supply 
which engages it in undertakings that promotes its well-being and advance- 
ment. The first ingredient, therefore, which is essential to the spread of the 
gospel, whether in a church or in these denominational bodies, is the posses- 



310 

sion of a knowledge of the wants of the destitute who are perishing for the 
bread of life. Knowledge of these things, nevertheless, does not of itself 
constitute development, but is only an incipient step in that direction. The 
next essential step, in a church, or in a convention, after the possession of 
knowledge, appears to be the possession of a certain degree of moral and 
social fellowship, by which the mind of each person in the denomination 
becomes softened and elevated, and the whole membership are united 
together in one bond of mutual alliance and friendship and brotherly love, 
the rupture of which is directly inimical to the spread of the gospel. 
Various other causes and agencies spring out of these, the operation of 
which together contribute to constitute a complete condition of denomina- 
tional development ; the ultimate result of the whole, both in the church and 
in the convention, being the spread of the gospel and the salvation of souls. 

Until very recent years in the history of Baptist churches, church inde- 
pendence was the mainspring of their action. But now in this the day of 
their full development, and henceforward inter-church dependence is, and 
will be, the established order of their inter- church polity. The independent 
local church, however important, is not a sufficiently extended development 
to lead the churches to their great destiny. Churches must live in wider 
unions and associations ; they have to establish ethical relations and to de- 
velop doctrinal tenets, which can never be fully obtained in the local church 
alone. An association and union of a different character is required — it ia 
called the Denomination. The prevaiUng idea in the local church, that de- 
termines the character of the intercourse between the members, is mutual 
attachment and brotherly love depending on personal relations, to which 
they are first induced by the ties of the Holy Spirit, on kindness and for- 
bearance. That which renders the local church so admirable, so holy, is 
brotherly love, and continued forgetfulness of a separate individual interest. 
The fundamental idea of inter-church-dependence, on the other hand, is the 
development of the whole denomination — the spread of the gospel — and the 
ethical relations which exist between church and church. That which ren- 
ders the association of churches so great and important is that it maintains 
inter-church rights, protects, and is a continual guard over the doctrines of 
the Bible ; that it plans for the spread of the gospel at home and abroad in 
fiilfiUment of the Scriptural injunction. Go preach the gospel to every creature. 
This labor of preaching the gospel must be divided, as the churches stand 
in constant need of each other and are inter-dependent upon one another, 
according as God has given them numbers and wealth to prosecute the 
good work. 

The progress of the local church requires the co-operation of all other 
churches for its development. That which any one church could do itself 
is obviously exceedingly limited. And even if this were not true, isolated 
progress could not be traced. The rudest sort of co-operative church gov- 
ernment, the feeblest associational or conventional government, is so much 
stronger than isolated churches, that isolated churches not thus affiliated 
might very easily cease to exist and no great damage be done to the great 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 311 

denomination. The first great development of Baptist churches had its be- 
ginning in co-operative associations and conventions. Until the churches 
learned their value their progress was slow and tardy ; that unless they 
make a strong co-operative bond they will be outdone and overshadowed by 
some other denomination which has such a bond. The co-operation in all 
such cases depends on a felt union of heart and spirit, not for the purpose of 
domineering over the churches or the individual members thereof, but for 
the spread of the cause of Christ ; and this can only be done when there is 
a great degree of real likeness in mind and feeling, however that likeness 
may have been attained. But when the superiority and sacredness of the 
individual local church is not regarded, when it is no longer apprehended as 
a divine institution, but as devised by men and shaped only by a law of ex- 
pediency, and subject to the caprice of men, the life of ecclesiastical govern- 
ment is corrupted in its very sources. The churches have not their origin 
in the association or convention, but they exist in a necessary correlation 
with them, and the development of each in this relation must always have 
a deeper recognition. 

By joining in conventions and associations, churches are not only brought 
together as regards their physically associating in one body, but they are 
spiritually and morally united into one being. A mutual intercourse as 
regards their ideas and their needs, and an interchange of religious feeling, 
takes place between all the diiferent members ; and the results thus produced 
on the character of the whole, are preserved and transmitted from one 
generation to another, so that the denomination itself never dies, but is one 
perpetually existing spiritual body or Christian community. The establish- 
ment of mutual intercourse between churches of the same faith and order, is 
not only directly calculated to contribute of itself towards their develop- 
ment, but it also leads them to resort to, and to avail themselves of those 
other elements of development which have always been considered as 
essential to their growth and completion, more especially those of an educa- 
tional and journalistic nature. It may consequently be concluded that how 
mucli soever a church may be naturally and innately urged on to improve its 
condition, as an independent church, and which is essential for the attain- 
ment of its individual development the stimulus to do this is much increased 
by its entering into associational affiliation with other churches, and becom- 
ing a social and spiritual community. It is thenceforth led to do both by 
the example of other churches, as also from a feeling of emulation not to be 
excelled by them, as well as its own natural desire of improvement. These 
denominational bodies, moreover, induce each church in them to develop its 
higher endowments and energies, which alone directly contribute towards 
the attainment of Christian development. 

In order to insure the activity of a wholesome emulation conducive to de- 
nominational development, it is, however, not only necessary that conventions 
and associations be formed, but that fraternal communication and intellectual 
intercourse between the different members of them be carried on. And the 
greater the means of free communication throughout the denomination are 



312 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

afforded, tte greater will be tlie progress of development amoDg the churclies. 
Indeed, the history of the early churches shows that one of the peculiar 
features observable during those days was that each separate church or sec- 
tion was not only iudependent of, but often at enmity with each other. 
Whereas association binds them all into one fraternal union, and converts 
rivalry into fellowship, and acts of ill will into offices of mutual love and aid. 
The more free and the more constant is the communication which is carried 
on between the different churches, the less liable will they be to attempt, or 
even to desire to establish themselves into distinct rival conventions. By 
this inter-communion of churches different minds are brought together, ideas 
are communicated from one to another, varieties of character are exhibited 
to each, knowledge of several kinds is diffused, and a full acquaintance with 
the nature and resources of the denomination is acquired by all. Indeed, as 
regards inter-church communion in general, that which most directly tends 
to the complete development of a denomination, is the establishment of free 
and friendly relation and fellowship between the rich and the poor, the 
learned and the less informed, by which the knowledge of the former is 
communicated to the latter, and the latter are bound by feelings of brotherly 
love and gratitude to the former. In many respects the effects of this inter- 
course is beneficial to both parties, as not merely do the rich and learned 
learn many lessons of practical wisdom from the lips of the poor ; but'the 
exercise of acts of charity and benevolence has a high moral influence and 
brings those who thus act, its own precious reward. 

As denominational intercourse is the most perfect condition of Baptist 
churches, so universal peace among them will be one of the most precious 
moral fruits resulting therefrom. Among the main causes of the progress 
cf the gospel when the churches are all at peace with one another, it cannot 
be doubted that the existence of mutual intercourse between them certainly 
is one of the most powerful As no great benefit is without its correspond- 
ing bane, so with this inter-church communion errors are scattered and dif- 
fused, if any, among the churches with which it takes place ; the correct 
principles of one church may be vitiated or degenerated by the errors and 
lax principles of the churches with which it holds intercourse. The best 
security, indeed, the only safe guarantee against the corruption of doctrine 
by this means, is the instability of sound and correct principles on those 
subjects, concerning which there is the most danger of their being unsettled. 
And the more completely this is effected, the more perfect will be the con- 
dition of their progress and development. This unity of faith and doctrine 
serves as a kind of chain to bind together the churches, that all may 
acknowledge one common standard of truth. This tends to prevent dis- 
orders and disruptions, just as the recognition of the same laws binds 
together the various subjects of the same country, and the acknowledgment 
of the same faith and practice unites all Christians of like order into one 
common brotherhood. On the other hand, it must be remembered that this 
independence of the churches is greatly endangered by interfering with the 
internal affairs of other churches. This interference need not necessarily 



OR, THE COMMOIT LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 313 

proceed from the government of another church. Petitions and remon- 
strances, affecting the domestic affairs of a sister church coming from asso- 
ciations, conventions, committees and self-constituted councils concerning 
what has transpired in a church, which, sad to say, often happens, are rep- 
rehensible in the highest degree, and should never be indulged in. I do 
not discuss here whether it is not salutary at times and under some circum- 
stances, but inasmuch as it is an abridgment of the independence of the 
churches, it has no place in a well-ordered system of Baptist church juris- 
prudence. 

In the formation of Baptist conventions and associations, it is not the 
purpose to rule and reign over the churches, to bind them together as with 
bands of steel, or in any way to interfere with their rights and powers. The 
object and end of these bodies is the entire development of the energies 
and resources of the denomination at large, and the advancing them to that 
state where all those energies and resources will be fully matured, 
and which must, doubtless, be their most perfect, if not, indeed, 
their most natural condition also, being that to which they were both 
adapted and intended ultimately to attain. The end of these associational 
bodies is therefore, in reality, no less than the perfection of the churches, 
coDsidering this in its largest, most extensive and most complete sense, as 
that wherein all their most valuable qualities and properties will attain 
their amplest development. And as this development consists, as regards 
its essence, in rendering the higher endowments predominant over those 
which are lower ; so, as regards its end, this is fully attained when all the 
most valuable resources and powers of the churches are completely matured 
and brought to perfection. It takes something else besides ecclesiastical 
government to do this, especially among a people thoroughly imbued with 
the principles of religious liberty, and whose religion is all based on the 
same fundamental doctrines, who belong to churches free and independent of 
one another, and who follow the same practice, and who all profess to be 
seeking the same object. It is, therefore, essential that care should be taken 
in the framing of a system of inter- church communion which is intended to 
ensure full freedom to the churches, that this is not so far done as that the 
churches do not degenerate into subjection to these extra-ecclesiastical 
bodies. The object of a conventional form of government is to ensure the 
establishment of such a system of rules, as will secure to each church entire 
freedom from all restraint, without encroaching upon the liberty of other 
churches. The utmost extent of ecclesiastical liberty, which any church 
has a right to enjoy, amounts to this : That it be allowed to follow the dic- 
tates of its own will, so far as its doing so does not encroach upon, abridge, 
or interfere with the liberty or well-being of other churches. 

In the matter of church government they who let the apostles choose 
their plan for them have no need of any other faculty than that of following 
the form laid down by them religiously and conscientiously. But they who 
would set up extra or quasi ecclesiastical forms of government such as a Bap- 
tist convention or association for themselves, must employ their own faculties. 



314 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

Thej must use observation to see how it shall be constructed, reason and 
judgment to foresee how it shall work, activity to gather materials to work 
into the fabric, and when they have put them together, firmness and self-con- 
trol to hold that government in check to keep it from usurping powers not 
conferred upon it. But as for a church they should remember, that, Except 
the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. This house is not 
a structure to be built after our own fancy out of materials heaped together 
by others, but a divine something which requires to grow and develop itself 
on all sides according to the divine builder's specifications, and the tendency 
of the inward forces which make it a living thing. But as to conventions 
and associations they are to be regarded as wholly an afiair of invention and 
contrivance. Being made by man, it is assumed that man has the choice 
either to make them or not, and how and on what pattern they shall be 
made. A body, according to this conception, is a problem to be worked like 
any other question of business. But a church of the living God is quite 
another thing. The will of man has had no part in its formation. It is an 
organic growth, based upon the life and nature of God's own peculiar 
people. 

In every other system except the Baptist form of church government there 
is necessarily established in these extra-ecclesiastical bodies a centralized 
authority to regulate their common affairs, to prescribe to each church and 
to each individual the conduct they shall observe with a view to the denomi- 
national welfare, and to possess the means of procuring obedience thereto. 
This authority they contend belongs to the denomination, or to the church 
universal ; but it may be exercised in a variety of ways, and every such de- 
nomination feels itself at perfect liberty to choose that mode which suits it 
best. Not so with Baptists. They have never accorded to these bodies any 
ecclesiastical power whatever, but all such power is necessarily resident in 
the churches. The fundamental regulation that determines the manner 
in which denominational authority is to be executed, is what forms the con- 
stitution of these bodies. In this is seen the form in which they propose to 
act, after the fashion of a body politic — how and by whom they are to be 
governed — and what are the rights and duties of the governed, and of the 
governors. The most fundamental regulation in these Baptist constitutions 
and the one to which all the others are subordinate, is that these bodies shall 
have and exercise no ecclesiastical power and authority over the churches. 
If space permitted it would be rendering the churches an important service 
to show from ecclesiastical history, so called, how some churches have thus lost 
their sovereignty and entirely changed their nature, and surrendered their orig- 
inal constitution. This ought to awaken the attention of the religious world ; 
seeing the influence of these first departures, they would no longer shut 
their eyes against innovations which, though at first may be inconsiderable in 
themselves, never fail to serve as steps to mount to higher and more perni- 
cious departures. 

Now, although the denominational necessity has established a general 
conventional union between the churches, by creating them subject to such 



OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 315 

wants as render the assistance of one another indispensably necessary to 
enable them to keep pure the doctrine, and besides in all things to live in a 
manner suitable to the churches of Christ, yet this has not imposed on them 
any particular obligation to unite in a body politic. On the other hand, it 
is easy to perceive when we study the nature of these churches that this 
association is very far from being necessary between the churches to make 
them fit depositories for ecclesiastical government. We cannot, therefore, 
say fiecessity equally recommends it, much less that the Scripture prescribes 
it. These churches, nevertheless, have powerful motives for carrying on a 
communication and association with each other, and it is even their duty to 
do so, under proper guarantees, and securities, since no church without good 
reasons can refuse assistance to another church. It is therefore sufficient 
that churches should conform to what is required of them by the laws of 
brotherly love and fellowship established between all churches of the same faith 
and order. Whatever laws there may have been evolved from this associa- 
tion are deducible from the naturalliberty and independence of the churches, 
from the attention due to their common safety, from the nature of their 
mutual correspondence, their reciprocal duties, and the distinction of their 
various rights and duties, internal and external, perfect and imperfect. 
The common law of the gospel, therefore, has established this union of the 
churches, whose great end is the common good and advantage of them all ; 
and the means of attaining that end constitute the rules that each church is 
bound to observe in its whole conduct. Baptists having, therefore, been 
presented with a better system of church government than our wisdom 
would ever have devised, let them not fail to realize its beauty and utility, 
because of the ignorance of the principles on which it depends. 

Hitherto we have considered each local church as a separate and inde- 
pendent whole, being the depository of all the ecclesiastical power on earth. 
In the early ages of the churches inter-church law had scarcely any existence, 
but more recently there has sprung up an important branch of Baptist 
church jurisprudence from the necessities of denominational intercourse one 
with another. Heretofore Baptists have been so jealous of the independency 
of the churches that they have been slow to enter into associations and 
general conventions. But the churches w^hich formerly admitted of no 
ecclesiastical union, having no law to guide them in their intercourse, except 
their own capricious wills, are now anxious and willing to regard themselves 
as obedient to certain rules, the observance of which is expedient and edify- 
ing to them ail. 

Denominational inter-church common law may be defined to be that 
system of unwritten rules which governs, or ought to govern, the conduct of 
churches in their intercourse one with another. It is a rule of conduct 
deriving its obligation alone from the consent of the churches, and binding 
only on those churches that voluntarily enter these bodies. The churches, 
being independent of each other, acknowledge no common sovereign from 
whom they can receive a law. The relative duties between churches result 
from usage and custom, to neither of which can the term law in its judicial 



316 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

sense be applied. These rules of comity arid communion are not such as are 
ecclesiastical laws generated, or prescribed by superiors to persons in a state 
of subjection to their authority. It is not a positive law ; for every positive 
law is prescribed by a given superior or sovereign to a person or tribunal 
in a state of subjection to its author. These rules concerning the conduct 
of churches, considered as related to. each other, are termed laws by analogy 
to positive laws, being imposed upon churches, not by the positive command 
of a superior authority, but by opinions generally current among churches, 
their authority not being secured by the fiat of a personal lawgiver. The 
duties wliich it imposes are enforced by moral sanctions, and by apprehen- 
sions on the part of churches, of provoking general disapprobation, and 
incurring the displeasure of sister churches, in case they should violate eccle- 
siastical usages, customs and maxims so generally received and established. 

When a collection of Baptists unite into an organic unit for the purpose 
of forming a local church, they may, indeed, enter into particular covenants 
toward those with whom they thus associate themselves ; but they still 
remain bound to the performance of a duty they owe to the rest of the de- 
nomination. There must necessarily be a oneness of faith and practice 
between them, else there could be no denomination, and when an universal 
conviction becomes so powerful as to bind all the churches, then it is that an 
inter- church customary or common law is called into existence. These cus- 
toms are purely conventional in their nature, and are observable by each 
church only in so far as they are intrinsically Scriptural and just, there 
being no ecclesiastical power outside of the churches to enforce their observ- 
ance. All these things could not be regulated but by some sort of rules 
which are nothing more than the laws of brotherly love and fellowship, 
which the members of different churches are to use towards one another 
under all circumstances. The difference between the laws which govern the 
local churches in themselves, and inter-church laws, are such as mtist prevail 
in a church, and such as ought to govern between church and church. 

While we cannot say that the Scriptures command the association of 
churches, yet we are certain that nowhere is it forbidden. Individual 
churches are so constituted, and capable of doing so little by themselves, 
that they cannot subsist and fulfill the measure of their usefulness without 
the aid of inter-church communion. But so soon as a considerable number 
of them have united under the same association or convention whether large 
or small, they become able to do a great work they individually could not, 
for want of strength and means, hope to accomplish without this union, it 
being effected for the purpose of promoting their mutual usefulness, by the 
joint efforts of their combined strength. The offices of brotherly love and 
assistance being no less obligatory on churches than on individuals, churches 
owe in their way, the same to one another. They are obliged by this law 
of brotherly love reciprocally to cultivate it and to observe toward each 
other all the duties which the safety and advantage of the denomination 
require. The nature and necessities of the denomination, which without the 
assistance of all the churches, being unable to supply all its wants, to pre- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 817 

serve itself and to render itself perfect, plainly shows us that it is the com- 
mon duty of all churches to live in a constant association one with another, 
in the interchange of mutual aid. The surest method of succeeding in this 
aim, is, that each individual should exert his efforts first for his own church, 
and then for his denomination, which includes all sister churches. Hence 
it follows that whatever we owe to our own church we likewise owe to the 
denomination, so far as it stands in need of our assistance, and we can grant 
it without neglecting our own church. Such is the eternal and immutable 
law of brotherly love between the churches — not knit together by legislative 
bonds by thews and sinews, but linked in a bond of Christian union, all 
worshipping one God, all professing one religion, all believing one doctrine, 
and all practicing one form of church government. They have a right to 
ask for all these kind offices, but not to demand them. Every church being 
free and the sole arbiter of its own actions, it belongs to each to consider 
whether it is warranted in asking or granting anything in this hue. 

Elsewhere we have seen what power custom has to evolve and control 
rules of church law ; let us now examine whether there are not some ecclesias- 
tical usages over which long custom has no power. To determine this it is 
necessary first to observe, that there are some rights belonging to every 
church which consist in a single exercise of its sovereign power — rights of 
mere ability. They are such in their ow^n nature that a church may use 
them or not, as it thinks proper, being absolutely free from all external 
restraint in this respect. So that the actions that relate to the exercise of 
these rights, are acts of mere free will, that may be done, or left undone 
according to pleasure. It is manifest that rights of this kind cannot be con- 
sidered as being irrevocable on account of their long exercise, since such acts 
are only voluntary in their nature. If a church possesses a privilege which 
is of such a nature that it may, or may not be exercised, as it deems proper, 
it cannot be presumed from the fact that a church, having long used, or for- 
borne to use it, that this usage forever afterwards binds the church to that 
line of action. 

All writers upon Baptist church jurisprudence agree that, any church, for 
any cause, satisfactory to itself, is justified in withdrawing from the associa- 
tion. The causes w^hich will authorize so violent a departure from the settled 
order of things are not enumerated, and need not be defined. The idea of a 
council to sit in judgment upon the controversies which may lead to with- 
drawal, is not to be entertained, but is directly repudiated. The great 
desideratum then is to be able to contrive some expedient which will exempt 
us from this stern necessity, which will substitute peaceable, in the place of 
violent withdrawals. The monarchical or universal form of church govern- 
ment does not admit of this remedy ; the Baptist polity does. Instead of 
forcible resistance of the conventional authority while the church is within 
it, that church is at liberty quietly to withdraw, while others may retain 
their position in the convention. This is one of the most important attri- 
butes of Baptist church government. Secession is the instrument, happily 
substituted in the place of open hostility to the convention, thus leaving it 



318 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

alone to work out its destiDy as best it may. The great risk whicli 
will be incurred by the seceding church, the disadvantageous position in 
which it will be placed before the denomination, standing alone in the midst 
of a compact convention of churches, will operate as a powerful check upon 
its conduct, and will prevent recourse to such extreme measures, unless it 
can be justified before the bar of public opinion. At the same time the open 
recognition of the right to withdraw will render it disgraceful to embark in 
auy scheme of concerted resistance to the usages and customs of the conven- 
tion while the church continues a member of it. The explicit recognition of 
the right to withdraw will also operate as a salutary restraint upon the con- 
vention. If a number of churches threatened to withdraw, the convention 
would be in danger of being deprived of so much strength and importance, 
and doubtless every measure which prudence and calm judgment could sug- 
gest would be adopted to avert so great a calamity. The public councils 
would be marked by more reflection, when a moral agency was substituted 
in the place of coercion. Instances, therefore, of withdrawals of a church 
from a well-ordered convention are accordingly very rare. 

To apply these principles, let us suppose that a certain church has 
co-operated with a particular associational body for a long space of time, say 
for a century it has continued to seek that avenue of usefulness. As the 
church has done in this respect what it thought proper, and at first was not 
bound to do, it is not to be presumed from this long co-operation that it 
meant thereby to surrender its independency and deprive itself of the right of 
withdrawing therefrom, and co-operating with any other body of a like 
nature ; and consequently its rights cannot be lost by the custom ; this right 
being that of ability or power to do so, and long custom has no binding 
authority. The simple permission a church gives to its members to cor- 
respond with these religious bodies gives no right to these bodies to demand 
such co-operation. They cannot claim that acquiescence has taken place 
from long custom, otherwise there might be erected an ecclesiastical hier- 
archy that would soon assume dominion over the churches, and overawe 
them in the free exercise of their sovereign rights. Such bodies may make 
use of the permission and condescension of the churches as long as it lasts, 
but nothing can prevent a church from changing its will. 

Baptists have ever considered these bodies as extra-ecclesiastical and not 
expressly provided for in the Scriptures. They have no ecclesiastical power 
in themselves, neither can they exercise any over the churches. Much less 
can the churches exercise any control over these bodies, and in no sense of 
the word, by this union is there generated any organic union between them 
such as can exercise any ecclesiastical power whatever, nor are the churches 
in the least responsible for anything they do. Individuals may by their 
covenants enter into a perfect obligation with respect to each other in things 
lawful to be done where there is imposed a perfect obligation. But churches, 
as such, being charged by Christ with doing certain things, have no Scrip- 
tural right to delegate its authority to another body, for it being a divine 
trust reposed in the churches, it cannot be assigned to a non-Scriptural body 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 319 

not known to Christ and his apostles, or if known might not have been 
selected for such a purpose. 

These denominational bodies are composed of messengers chosen from such 
churches as are willing to co-operate with them. In ascertaining what 
powers they have it is obviously proper that we should look only to the 
purposes for which they are appointed. If they are anything they can be 
nothing more than the agents of the churches. An agent can claim nothing 
for himself, and on his own account. These bodies are voluntary unions, 
and the parties to the union are the churches only through their messengers. 
The entire sovereignty of each church is in the members thereof when united 
into an organic body. When they thus voluntarily join themselves together 
in a convention, they part with no portion of their sovereignty, but merely 
determine what portion thereof shall lie dormant, what portion they will 
exercise, and in v>^hat modes, and by what agencies they will exercise it. 
"Whatever power this quasi government may possess is still the power of the 
messengers of the local churches who are only permitted to assemble by the 
churches condescension, and the sovereignty of the churches remain the same. 
By the exercise and employment of any government in this extra ecclesias- 
tical body there is no power taken from the churches, the messengers from 
which make the government. The question is not so much as to what powers 
are granted, but more especially what powers are denied. But it is fair to 
presume that churches absolutely sovereign and having an unlimited right to 
govern themselves as they please, would not deny to themselves the exercise 
of any auxiliary necessary to their prosperity and development, otherwise 
some agency necessary to the denominational weal might lie useless. 

Strictly speaking the churches have no express warrant of Scripture to 
form these bodies and are not bound to do so. But when formed there is no 
original grant of powers except for deliberation and advisement. They can- 
not legislate, nor pass any obligatory law, by virtue of any inherent authority 
in themselves, as derived from the churches. When they adjourn they 
become dissolved and are functus officio, and the authority given them has 
ceased to exist ; when they convene they are a new body, and anything 
which they might undertake to do after adjournment would be without any 
other right or authority than what was derived from the mere consent 
and acquiescence of the several churches by whose condescension they were 
permitted to convene. If it takes any action it must advise or resolve ; it 
may recommend, not to the churches, but to the denomination, whatever it 
believes to be for their advantage, but it can command nothing. To erect 
these bodies and attempt to organize them by covenants into a politic union 
for government would be rank treason against the ecclesiastical government 
of God, an act of open rebellion, and would at once sever all the ties which 
bound them together. 

Notwithstanding these denominational bodies have no ecclesiastical 
power they are, nevertheless, valuable for many purposes. They render the 
churches stronger and more able to preserve themselves from false doctrines, 
which will be treated of in its proper place. They facilitate the spread of 



320 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

the gospel and thus attracts them one to another, cements them in the bonds 
of brotherly love, and gives them advantages which they could not enjoy 
without this association. In fact, the glory of the churches is intimately con- 
nected with these bodies, and it becomes one of the most important duties of 
every church to join them. But if these associations, or the messengers com- 
posiDg them, attempt to force rules relative to matters in which the social 
compact cannot oblige every messenger to submission, those who are averse 
to these rules have a right to quit the association and go elsewhere. For 
they cannot be supposed to have subjected themselves to the authority of 
men who have no power over them ; and if the association suffers, or is 
weakened by their departure from Baptist principles, the blame, if any, must 
be imputed to the intolerant party who attempts to force others to obedi- 
ence. They have, however, some rights incident to their very organization, 
without which they could not subsist as Baptist bodies. They must be per- 
mitted to judge of the qualification of their own members, and prescribe by- 
laws for their own government. No Baptist convention that regards the 
denominational tranquillity as worth preserving, can afford to lay down rules 
that all churches cannot heartily endorse and hold inviolable. Everything 
of selfishness and self-aggrandizement should be eliminated. Far from seek- 
ing to do anything to disturb the denominational tranquillity, they ought to 
respect and maintain the dignity and independence of the churches. If they 
are inspired by virtue more than pride, and have sufiicient discernment to 
distinguish their own interest, they will pursue a policy dictated by the most 
consummate wisdom and piety. The more cautious they are to avoid offend- 
ing the humblest member and the weakest church, the greater esteem they 
will testify for them, and the more they will revere that association or con- 
vention whose care for them is displayed only by the conferring of favors 
and assisting them to attain the fullness of their perfection. 

This inter-church communion manifested in conventions is to be observed 
because it unites all churches one with another in a multitude of mutual 
religious duties which helps to preserve sister churches from running into 
heresies and other erroneous practices, besides it serves to extend the gospel 
of our Saviour abroad in destitute lands. These general bodies charged with 
this work are what may be termed companies of messengers, representatives 
of local churches, assembled by the condescension of the churches to delib- 
erate concerning matters of common interest to them all. They are mystical 
bodies, so to speak, as compared with the local churches, which are veritable 
organic assemblies by institution formed into local tribunals under covenants 
to obey the laws and ordinances of the gospel. The local churches are visi- 
ble bodies, because their members, when assembled, constitute the churches 
and can be seen and conversed with; they can deliberate and take resolutions 
in common, and are, therefore, clothed with ecclesiastical power. One is the 
church actual, and the other is the representative of the church mystical, 
thereby begetting a twofold communion and intercourse which Baptists owe 
to one another. The one is exercised as occasionally they meet in conven- 
tions ; the other is exercised as they are formed up into several organic 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF TH 3PEU 321 

bodies by Christ's institution, and exercises ecc tical powers by way of 

authority and jurisdiction. Conventions do whatever it is lawful for them 
to do by way of custom and usage, and are not linked together by any 
ecclesiastical bonds. They have not, nor can they exercise the powers of all 
churches there represented ; if they have such power they must be a church. 
Such representatives when met in convention are nowhere in the Scriptures 
called a church. They are not a body to Christ ; but every church is such 
a body, and in no instance is there an example in the Record where Christ 
is said to have a representative body of his bodj^ They are, it is true, an 
assembly having a oneness of will, faith and practice, that is, a company of 
believers personally gathered, but a representative church having ecclesias- 
tical powers, they are not, and cannot be. Such a body to be a church must 
be an assembly organized after some example laid down in the Scriptures, 
otherwise they have not, nor can they claim the power of all the churches 
within the bounds of a given territory, nor otherwise do their acts and 
decrees oblige them to subjection. The divine efficacy of all religious bodies, 
including the church itself, depends first upon Christ's blessing on them, and 
this certainly depends upon Christ's having specifically instituted them. 
This being the case no body of Christian men should ever set up an extra- 
ecclesiastical body, and attempt to endow it with ecclesiastical powers unless 
Christ has instituted and appointed it. 

The true relations that exist between churches and conventions may be 
exemplified by the social relations that exist between man and man as they 
are made of one blood and one nativity. In such relations there are duties 
and obligations that thence arise, and as it is the law of nature, which rules 
them as they are men, there is a communion and a duty which every man 
owes to every other man, and likewise a duty w^hich every man owes to 
many men ; and therefore there is the law of nature which reigns over all 
the world and men are subject thereto, and cannot escape therefrom if they 
would. If men be cast into several nations, there is the law of nations, or 
international law, common to nations as they are nations, which binds them 
to duties one toward another, which, though it be a natural and voluntary 
communion of those nations one with another, yet there arises out of these 
relations no organic government and authority over one another, but corre- 
sponds with that intercourse which men have one with another as men. In 
like manner there is an intercourse which is carried through all churches 
of the same faith and order, as it were by the common law of the gospel, as 
they are formed up into several gospel churches. The same communion and 
intercourse holds between church and church that would hold between man- 
kind as organized into several nations, and there arises out of these relations 
duties and obligations for mutual help, for mutual strength and edification. 

Hence a Baptist convention or association may be defined to be a com- 
bination of separate individuals, or rather churches represented by indi- 
viduals, who enter into a voluntary agreement, and in the arrangement 
which they have formed is the source of whatever government they are per- 
mitted to exercise. The object of the organization is mainly to devise ways 
21 



322 A THEATIH >0K BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE: 

I 

and means for the spij of the gospel at home and abroad, and their exis- 
tence is assumed to be merely artificial, as formed through an association of 
men in a certain co-partnership of interest and as only the aggregate of 
those who, before living separately, entered it voluntarily. The churches 
are formed in the development of the historical life of baptized believers in 
the faith of the gospel, and are foreordained to live always, while conven- 
tions are temporary arrangments which are formed in pursuance of certain 
separate and secular ends. The churches in their being and existence have 
their origin only in the divine will, while the convention exists in the act 
of those who separately or collectively enter it. The churches have their 
work by divine appointment, and of this cannot divest themselves, as if it 
were an external thing, nor alienate, nor transfer it to another. The con- 
vention is a device of a transient expediency, in conformance to certain 
abstract formulas, as the exposition of a device to accomplish certain things 
which the churches for want of members and means and organization could 
not accomplish. 

The churches exist in an organic and judicial relation to their members, 
and between them and their respective members no power on earth can 
intervene. The convention has not the promise of the guidance of the 
Holy Spirit as the churches have, for their structure is formed after their own 
device, and out of the material which Christ has heaped together. They 
make and prepare their own brick and mortar which he has accumulated, 
although the materials be as old as the first Catholic council or Presbyterian 
synod ever convened on earth. Churches thus associated can enter into no 
league, nor alliance, nor form any government touching the autonomy of 
the churches. To attempt to lay a feather's weight upon these organic 
churches would be rank treason against these sacred institutions and a vio- 
lation of the law of the gospel. Conventions, synods and conferences are 
men's creatures, but churches are Christ's judicatories, living, continuous and 
perpetual bodies, clothed with a power that comes down from above. If 
church sovereignty and ecclesiastical power be not vested here, and does 
not subsist in the organic church, it is impossible to tell where it is to be 
found, and all inquiry concerning it is vain and visionary. The local 
churches will concede to these extra-ecclesiastical bodies no spiritual life or 
powers, no real freedom, no fulfillment of a divine vocation in conscious 
obedience to a divine will. They assume to themselves under, not only the 
positive, but common law of the gospel, the working out the divine will and 
energy, and the fulfillment of the divine purpose in themselves alone. For 
through the churches alone is exercised all the ecclesiastical power on 
earth, and that exercised by any other body is but ecclesiastical usurpation, 
and is a baseless structure. 

Except the Lord build the houses they labor in vain that build it. And un- 
less they who build the house recognize this truism in ecclesiastical govern- 
ment, they shall succeed in their undertaking no better than the babbling 
builders of Babel. In the building of huge councils, synods and confer- 
.jenees and in investing them with ecclesiastical powers, the wills of the many 



OR, THE CO:.IMOX LAW OF THE GOSI ./ 323 

have no expression in them, and there is substituted in its steaa tne -will of 
the individual or that of a class, to whom alone action and rule is allowed- 
The government is not that of the membership of the churches as in the 
apostles' times, but it is apart from the people. They are the subjects of it, 
whether good or bad, but not participants in it, and have no place in its 
positive determinations. These systems allow no real expression of the will 
of the membership, but only to the individual, or class of individuals, who 
usurp the authority to rule them. Thus, these governments become repres- 
sive, and tend to efface the conscious spiritual life of the churches, and the 
people to which they belong. The rulers are not even members of the 
churches which they rule, but they are governors in some way, and after 
some fashion of the churches in general. There is no law and no power 
beyond their capricious wills ; there is no voice except their individual pro- 
clamation, and no rights which need be respected beyond their decrees, but 
the sole authority is the private judgment of those who assume to rule the 
whole denomination, being nothing more or less than a necessary absolutism. 
In this system there is in the membership no evocation of a moral spirit^ 
and no education of an individual character in them. The capacity of each 
member is not called forth, and his individual powers are not awakened ; he 
is in no immediate relation to the ruling power, he cannot realize in it his 
own purpose, nor strive for the embodiment of his own moral aims. The 
life of the local church is withdrawn from him and the conduct of its affairs, 
although he lives in it and is a part of it ; for it is all kept a secret from 
him ; he cannot comprehend it, as in his individual existence he is not com- 
prehended in it, nor by it. There is, therefore, no development of the indi- 
vidual personality, no spiritual life in the church. The tendency of this 
ecclesiastical imperialism is not only to undermine the spiritual life of the 
membership in its immediate action in the subversion of the personality and 
individuality, but to build up and foster a church aristocracy, and aims at 
the grandeur and permanence of a church dynasty, the like of which can 
nowhere be seen in the Holy Scriptures. To destroy the free and indepen- 
dent local churches and transfer the ecclesiastical authority, with which the 
gospel invests them, to any other body, the churches themselves would be 
destroyed, these marvelous organizations would be broken up, and the energy 
which had moulded and pervaded their action would be undermined, with 
no creative force to renew it, and no recuperative strength to overcome its 
decay. The body to be erected upon the ruins of the churches thus 
destroyed could only be done by an arbitrary institution of many men assem- 
bled together without law and without order, which is like a creation of 
nothing out of nothing, by human wit and human ingenuity, and is a fiction, 
and that a most pernicious one, and equally opposed to the teachings of God, 
as to the principles of religious liberty. 

Baptist conventions and associations, erected as they are, without ecclesi- 
astical power and control over the churches, stand opposite to modern coun- 
cils, conferences and synods charged with authority to govern the churches. 
This monstrous latter-day ecclesiasticism is the building not of apostolical 



324 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH .TUEISPRUDENCE ; 

church government, but of a pandemonium ; it makes the churches the con- 
fusion of strange tongues, and the Babel of incoherent and unmeaning voices. 
It is not the assertion of the sovereignty of the churches, but the negation of 
ecclesiastical sovereignty. Its exclusion by Baptists is no violation of the 
law of the democracy of the churches, but on the other hand it is necessary 
to the assertion of that democracy which characterized every church founded 
by the apostles. Baptists challenge one instance, or one example, in the 
Scriptures of many churches having met together by representation, or other- 
wise, after the fashion of post-apostolic systems, which put together will rise 
up to a platform of rule and government over the churches with the com- 
mand, As ye have therefore received, so walk. So that all churches then, as 
having received from the apostles the form of church government, it was not 
left to their power, to their arbitrament to innovate, or alter the same, but 
to continue to walk as they had begun in matters of church order. The 
planting and ordering of the churches of the living God requires another 
manner and a higher order of skill than the wit and wisdom of men. The 
apostles and evangelists whose office it was to plant and perfect the govern- 
ment, discipline and doctrine of the churches received extraordinary gifts to 
that end, which exceeds the combined wisdom and spirit of all presbyters, 
elders, bishops, cardinals and popes in aU the world, but all are tied- down 
to the directions of the apostles who were guided infallibly by the Holy 
Spirit, that they might be guided by them to mould ecclesiastical govern- 
ment accordingly. Paul, who had a supernatural power above any minister 
of this day, gave his directions to Timothy, My own son in the faith: That 
though mayest hiow how to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the 
church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. This is a skill, 
then, which depends upon apostolic revelation. It had been foretold : That 
in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing 
spirits, and doctrines of devils ; speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their con' 
sciences seared with a hot-iron. So these church examples and patterns were 
given, that we might in after ages have a rule to go by, and be able to 
restore all things to the primitive condition again. For this cause left I thee 
in Crete, that thou shouldst set in order the things that are wanting. Therefore 
as it is the house of God, so God must be the master-builder, for it is writ- 
ten, Except the Lord build the house they labor in vain who build it. 

As therefore the apostles in the establishment of ecclesiastical government 
did not set up a constant court or judicatory out of particular persons as 
ministers and bishops, so ministers and bishops are not to set up conventions, 
conferences and synods out of particular churches and appoint themselves 
rulers over them. There is a vast difference between the knitting together 
and union of an organic church and all other Christian bodies The union 
of the whole church universal is voluntary, and is simply by the communi- 
cation of the Spirit, and by the communion of those of the same faith and 
love, having the same spirit in them that dwells in Christ, and all his mem- 
bers called the communion of faith, being interested in the same benefits, 
and in the common salvation of the whole world. To form this union there 



OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 325 

is required no formal bonds and links, except those of love and Christian 
fellowsliip with all that in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus 
Christ our Lord. Of such a body Paul never said, that he rejoiced behold- 
ing their order, and that they were a body not only joined together, but fitly 
joined together. And as one false string out of tune makes a discord, 
there must be agreement in principles and doctrines to fit men and churches 
for fellowship even in this body, and as men who agree in the fundamental 
I laws of a kingdom are only fit to be loyal subjects in that kingdom, so only 
those who are fit subjects of this spiritual kingdom with a oneness of will, 
faith and practice are to be received, not turned away. This, however, is not 
the exercise of ecclesiastical power, as every seculur society has power to judge 
of the fitness and qualifications of its own members upon the principle 
announced by Solomon that one sinner will destroy much good. But this 
rejection relates not to the existence of the church, or its church state, but 
extends only to its right to a seat in the convention or association. For 
every such body has a right to refuse admission to a church into its society, 
when that church cannot enter it without exposing the convention to discord, 
or doing it a manifest injury. What it owes to itself, the care of its own 
safety, gives it this right in virtue of its natural liberty, even without a 
Scriptural rule, to judge whether its circumstances will justify the admission 
of a new church. It is on the same principle, and even for a stronger 
reason, that a church may refuse to affiliate with an association or conven- 
tion, or once having entered one may withdraw itself with impunity, for if 
either of the parties do not observe its engagements, the other is no longer 
bound by any law, as the contract is mutual. By so doing they have no 
perils to fear, no ecclesiastical bulls to dread, and no injuries to avenge, and 
are armed with no sword with which to avenge them, Neither has the 
body from which they secede any chains with which to shackle them. And 
this Is that religious liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and for 
which he paid a price, even to the giving up of his life. Anything else in 
church government has its root and spring in popery, and is grounded in the 
worst kind of despotisms — the absolutism of a multitude, and not the gov- 
ernment of free gospel churches of Christ — a rabble of men which is called 
to the expression of the will and thought and purpose of Christian men and 
and women. It is a formless waste, out of which the determination of the 
faith and order of the churches is sought, and is the necessary degradation 
of the whole fabric of ecclesiastical government. Such a government falls 
under the influence of parties, and sects, and classes, to be used for their 
special ends, and becomes subservient to those who will and have employed 
it for the accomplishment of selfish schemes, or the furtherance of their own 
ulterior interests. Its subjection is to the domination of those who can 
rule masses, but cannot rule those whom the priceless liberty of the gospel 
has made free, and has become the instrument of a priestly hierarchy as 
dangerous to civil liberty as it is to religious liberty, freedom and independ- 
ence. 

Every Baptist church in virtue of its sovereign power is absolutely free 



326 ^ TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

from the dominion of conventions and associations and may freely exercise 
all its prerogatives in any manner not inconsistent with the equal rights of 
other churches. The very fact of its sovereignty implies its independence of 
the control of any foreign body, and may therefore exercise all the preroga- 
tives incident to its sovereignty, as a separate, independent church. These 
rights and obligations are limited only by the laws of the gospel and the 
existence of similar rights in sister churches. These rights to which the 
church is entitled, as a distinct organization, are classed as absolute rights, 
and those to which the church is entitled under particular circumstances in 
its relation to other churches are considered as conventional rights. There 
can be no doubt but that all the errors which have arisen concerning church 
government, and led so many of the Christian world astray in regard to the 
true plan of church polity have sprung from this main heresy : That there 
is on earth such an universal church, or ecclesiastical power outside and 
above the local churches that all Christians of the same faith are bound to 
obey. Whereas there is nowhere in the history of the apostolic churches any 
account or example where they transferred their sovereign authority to any 
other body of men and invested them with aU the functions of ecclesiastical 
government,, thus destroying their independence, and building up an hier- 
archy to lord it over them. During the lives of the apostles there Were 
Christians and churches scattered over a great part of the world, but those 
churches were absolutely free one of another and those who belonged to them 
as members were exclusively and wholly subject to those churches alone. A 
church, such an one as is capable of commanding, judging or doing any other 
act, is nothing more than an independent local church ; for where there is no 
express covenant relation growing out of the express law of the gospel exist- 
ing between the body to be ruled and the ruling power, and no power erected 
to hear and to judge, can there be any power to give sentence. There can 
be no such power transferred to a convention or association because of the limits 
marked in the Scriptures from whence this power can be derived. Any body 
of believers possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly impressed 
with the idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their 
use and abuse of that trust to the great author and founder of the churches 
A man full of wit and wisdom and warm speculative benevolence, may wish 
the churches otherwise constituted than he finds them in the record, but a 
conscientious Baptist, a loyal lover and follower of the truth always considers 
how to make the most of the existing materials out of which he finds the 
churches already constructed, and refrain from working the debris of other 
systems into this divine structure, remembering that a disposition to preserve 
and an ability to improve, taken together, should be made the watchword of 
every lover of the Lord charged with keeping house for him. Everything 
else in church government is ruinous in conception and perilous in the execu- 
tion. When we cut loose from the moorings of God's word and enter upon 
the broad field of speculation and theory, in order to round out a system there 
is no telling to what lengths we may go, for it is the nature of man to gradu- 
ally usurp powers to which he is not entitled. With Baptists themselves — 



327 

the most loyal people on earth to the truth — it has ever been a strong 
struggle to preserve possession of what they have found committed to them 
— a free local church — and have ever cherished it as one of the greatest 
blesshigs that God has committed to them as a security against injustice and 
ecclesiastical despotism. 

Those systems which have gone in search of grandeur, power and splendor 
have always fallen a sacrifice to, and been the victims of their own folly. In 
erecting these huge bodies politic they have departed from the apostolic 
plan and established that legislative despotism found in all of them, which 
has led them further and still further away from the truth, and established 
that legislative omnipotence in these sacred affairs which has been the fund- 
amental principle of despotism in all ages of the churches. They have suf- 
fered themselves to be too much attached to the splendors of a great central- 
ized church, and being dazzled by this gaudy show they lose sight of the more 
useful, yet less ostentatious, purposes of the free and independent churches, 
and seem to be unconscious of the fact that in building up these huge 
temples of ecclesiastical power, they necessarily destroy those less pretending 
structures of church government, from which alone they derive all their 
Christian life, protection and safety. This is the false glare which has so 
often deceived the unthoughtfuland betrayed them into the slough of eccle- 
siastical despotism. As he who thinks it is better to belong to powerful, 
splendid and showy government than to a free and happy one, naturally seeks 
to surround the institution with a gaudy pageantry which belongs to mon- 
archical systems, so he who, not content to let the churches of Christ remain 
simple, free and independent, seeks to divest them of their sovereignty and 
to consolidate them into one huge temporal body. In such a church gov- 
ernment thus surrounded by all the pomp and splendor, the strugle is for 
the exercise of those incidental honors and powers from which avarice may 
expect its gratification. It is thus that distinctions are created among those 
who should be the humble servants of the churches, and classes are united 
in supporting the usurped powers of a centralized church, and an interest is 
thus created strong enough to carry all measures and sustain all abuses of 
ecclesiastical authority. 

Sovereign Baptist churches, being free and independent of each other, and 
likewise free from the dominion and control of conventions and associations, 
and considered as so many free persons living together in a church, are 
naturally equal and inherit from their respective organizations the same 
obligations and rights. Power or weakness does not, in this respect, produce 
any difference. The smallest church, situated in the remotest corner of 
Christendom, is as much a church as the largest one located in the greatest 
city in the world. By a necessary consequence of that equality, whatever is 
lawful for one to do is equally lawful for the other ; and whatever is unjusti- 
fiable in one, under its covenant obligations, is equally so in the other. Conse- 
quently none can naturally lay claim to any superior prerogative^for whatever 
prerogative any one of them derives from their sovereignty, the other equally 
derives the same from the same source. And since the precedency or pre- 



328 A TPvEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPHUDENCE ; 

eminence of rank is a prerogative no cliurcli can naturally claim it as a 
right. Hence a Baptist church has a right to treat every foreign power as 
disturbers of the denominational tranquillity that attempts to interfere in any 
way with her internal affairs otherwise than by their good offices. Church 
sovereignty subsists entire when none of the rights of v/hich it is constituted 
is conveyed or transferred to any man, or body of men, whether in or out- 
side of the church, or is otherwise hindered in the full exercise of its religious 
liberties. Baptist church government is degraded, nay, verily, destroyed 
when any of its prerogatives are ceded to or usurped by any other power, or 
if the free use of them is rendered dependent on the will of any one else; for, 
as to all the subjects of the internal workings of the churches, there is no 
necessity that there should be any ecclesiastical power beyond the bounds 
of such local church. They are all such powers as the churches are per- 
fectly competent to manage ; and the most competent because each church 
is the best and only judge of what is necessary to its own temporal and spir- 
itual development. There can be no room to complain of any want of 
power to do whatever the interest of the churches requires to be done. But 
we should not forget that in our system of jurisprudence the local church 
stands not alone, although it stands independent of all others. There is 
among all Baptist churches a oneness of will, faith and practice, because 
they are instituted under the same covenant, and founded by the same great 
head of the church, and hence are but a part of the denomination, and have 
their part of the work to perform, and coupled with the combined strength 
of all those of the same faith and order, make the perfect work. 

Hence it is necessary in order that there should be no centralization of 
ecclesiastical powers in a foreign tribunal, that the churches should natu- 
rally in themselves monopolize every species of authority and influence. 
The government of these different conventions and associations have been as 
remarkable for their weakness and inefficiency in respect to polity as that of 
the churches is for their vigor and capacity; and yet these general bodies 
contain certain novel principles which exercise a most important influence, 
although they do not at once strike the casual observer. These bodies, for 
a common object, while they agree to assume no ecclesiastical functions, they 
reserve to themselves the right to set on foot and foster every denomina- 
tional enterprise w^hich conduces to the spread of the gospel at home or 
abroad. Not only so, but they especially feel themselves called upon to 
guard the denominational doctrines of the churches in order to make them 
stable and uniform. Not that they assume the privilege of changing the 
doctrines of the churches, but to overlook them by a most marvelous influ- 
ence, to keep them pure and Scriptural. Should a departure from doctrine 
arise in their bounds, which is a palpable violation of the faith of the gos- 
pel, they ought by a formal declaration to express an opinion, by way of 
admonition, only as to what the true doctrine is, and to put the seal of con- 
demnation upon any departure therefrom, especially when it can be done 
without spreading further dissensions among the churches. While there is 
not, nor ought there to be anything binding in such declarations, yet it is a 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 329 

duty they owe to themselves and to the denomination to keep a conserva- 
tive oversight over those matters, so vital to themselves, and to the denomi- 
nation at large. As every one as an individual, or as a community of indi- 
viduals, have the right to consider and condemn anything he deems amiss 
in the community in which they live, and of which they are a part, so these 
associations of churches likewise ought to have the right to voice their 
opinions when abuses arise that tend to degrade the denomination. If it 
were not so how could the denominational doctrines be kept pure and unde- 
filed, and how else could they be kept from conniving at such abuses? 
"Whatever authority is exercised, acts only upon those present and extends 
no further, for this is not an ecclesiastical government, but a weak and 
incomplete government clothed with the privilege of advising the churches, 
but denying to themselves the right to control. While they are jealous of 
the doctrine of the denomination the main purpose of these bodies is the 
spread of the gospel and to look to every detail that has for its object the 
evangelization of the world by the diffusion of the truth, of Christian educa- 
tion and the spread of spiritual enlightenment. In vain does the law of the 
gospel prescribe to the churches, as well as to individuals the care of spread- 
ing a pure gospel and preserving it free from heresy, if it does not give them 
the right to protect themselves from everything that might render this care 
ineffectual. I am aware that I am treading upon holy ground when I speak 
of the right and duty of these denominational bodies to keep a strict over- 
sight over doctrine. But this right is nothing more than a moral power of 
advising and admonishing, that is, the power of doing what is proper and 
conformable to our duties. We have, then, in general a right to do what- 
ever is necessary to the discharge of our duties. Every convention and asso- 
ciation, as well as every member of a Baptist church, has, therefore, a right 
to use moral suasion and all proper admonition to prevent if possible other 
churches and individuals from obstructing the spread of a pure gospel, its 
preservation and perfection ; that is, to preserve the denomination from all 
heresies and errors of what kind soever that would destroy the unity of the 
doctrine; and this right is a perfect one, since it is given under the injunc-, 
tion to contend earnestly for the faith, and is also given to satisfy a spiritual 
and indispensable obligation. For when Baptists cannot use the influence of 
the denominational name in order to cause the doctrines of the churches to 
be respected, their rights are very uncertain. This right to preserve them- 
selves from all doctrinal impurity may be called the right of denominational 
security, and is a right inalienable. 

Amongst Baptists it is only by associations and conventions, or through 
tliis medium, that the resistance of the churches to any line of policy, or to 
any known errors or discords can, ever display itself; hence those in error, 
or the disturbers of the denominational tranquillity, always look with ill- 
favor on those associations or conventions which are not in their own power; 
and it is well worthy of remark that those in error or disorder generally 
entertain against these bodies a secret feeling of fear and jealousy, which 
prevents them from carrying out any denominational policy deemed most to 



330 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPRUDENCE ; 

their own interest. The power and influence of these quasi-ecclesiastical 
bodies, in view of the weakness of our form of church government, often 
astonish and alarm our people ; and the free use which each of these bodies 
make of its powers is regarded almost as a dangerous privilege. All these 
bodies which have sprung up in Baptist church jurisprudence so recently 
are new quasi-ecclesiastical pOAvers, not mentioned in the Scriptures, and 
whose rights to govern the churches have not been sanctioned by custom ; 
they came into existence at a time long subsequent to the apostolic age, and 
when inter-church law was weak and not well understood, and when the 
poAver of local church government was, as it is now, unbounded ; hence it 
is not surprising that these extraneous bodies lost their rights to govern the 
churches at their birth. 

These great denominational bodies, as I view them, are the custodians of 
the interests of the churches, and it is certainly performing a very bad office 
to the denomination, and doing it an essential injury, to suffer a church or 
individual members, under the auspices of a Baptist church, to spread a false 
and dangerous doctrine broadcast over the land. It is certain that Baptist 
conventions cannot, in opposition to the will of a church, interfere in her 
religious concerns by way of authority and jurisdiction, without violating her 
rights, and doing her an injury, but by way of a loving rebuke or admo- 
nition, they can do much to rectify the errors complained of, especially when 
the erring church by affiliation is a member of the convention. If, then, 
there is anywhere a church or an iu dividual member of a church of a rest- 
less and mischievous disposition, ever ready to injure the denomination by 
preaching a false doctrine, and to excite internal divisions and disturbances 
in its bounds, it is not to be doubted that a convention has a right to advise 
and to admonish in order to let it be known that they do not indorse and 
are not responsible for the docrine taught. For a convention, or an associ- 
ation, has a right to everything that can help to ward off" imminent danger, 
and to keep at a distance whatever is capable of causing disturbances and 
divisions. If conventions and associations are obliged to preserve them- 
selves from errors and false teachings, they are no less obliged carefully to 
preserve all the churches that go to make them up. These denominational 
bodies owe this to themselves, since the loss even of one of their members 
weakens them, and is injurious to their preservation. For those who com- 
pose these bodies, are united for their defense and common advantage ; and 
none can be justly deprived of this union and of the advantages he expects 
to derive from it while he fulfills or is willing to fulfill the conditions. But 
as before stated, this cannot be done by way of authority, for the doctrine 
which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those 
who desire to suppress it of course deny its truth ; but they are not infal- 
lible. Conventions have no authority to decide the question for all the 
churches, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To 
refuse a hearing to an individual or to a church, because they are sure it is 
false, is to assume that their certainty of its falseness is the same thing as 
an absolute certamty. All silencing of discussion without a hearing is an 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 331 

assumption of infallibility. The offending churches and individuals may 
then be admonished by denominational public opinion, though not by law. 

One of the great uses of conventions aside from the spread of the gospel is 
that there are denominational enterprises that cannot be carried on without 
an energy that requires considerable work and funds which surpasses the 
ability and inclination of a few individuals. These enterprises would soon 
become ruinous were they left alone and not undertaken by the combined 
energies of a great number of individuals with one regular spirit and according 
to well-supported customs. They usually are either educational, journalistic or 
eleemosynary. These laudable enterprises are sometimes owned and con- 
trolled by these bodies, or by the whole denomination ; but most usually by 
private individuals. Whether owned by the one or the other, experience 
has taught that the general course to be pursued towards them is the same. 
As an association or convention in common with individuals is bound to labor 
for its own preservation and protection, it has a right to every auxiliary to 
build it up, and to further its interests. Denominational schools and papers 
are powerful aids to this end, and these enterprises should be encouraged in 
their respective fields and spheres of labor. But it cannot be denied that 
the policy sometimes pursued by these denominational bodies towards these 
enterprises not infrequently render them the fruitful source of jarring dis- 
cords and ruinous divisions. That which was originally intended for good 
turns out sometimes to be the greatest source of annoyance. 

The denominational press is the more important when we consider that 
under a proper management it is a component part of the machinery of 
Baptist church polity. Not so in other systems where they feel themselves 
at liberty to formulate written creeds and a complete code of written rules 
of procedure. In church government to these sources they must confine 
themselves, for to them it is their law and their gospel. But in Baptist 
church jurisprudence the religious press is the organ of denominational 
public opinion, and the great ofl&ce which it performs is to criticise men 
and measures, doctrines and practice, and to effect a distribution of ecclesias- 
tical power throughout the denomination. This purpose is accomplished by 
distributing knowledge, and diffusing a common sympathy among the great 
mass of the churches and membership. In this day of religious enlighten- 
ment if we could suppose the denominational press to be suddenly annihi- 
hilated, our denominational enterprises and institutions would not long 
preserve their character. As there would be no superintending control 
anywhere, and no acquaintance with what was transacted in the denomina- 
tion, the affairs of the churches would soon be involved in the deepest 
mystery. The churches would soon be a scene of confusion, and as ignor- 
ance is the mother of oppression and priestly domination, the contest would 
terminate in the consolidation of ecclesiastical power. What is meant by 
the religious press being the organ of denominational opinion, is not the 
opinion of any one set of men, or any particular faction to the exclusion of 
all others. The mixture of so many opinions, causing light to be shed upon 
each, contributes to moderate the tone of that factional spirit which is so apt 
to disturb the denominational tranquillity. 



832 A TBEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

It were better that there be but few denominational papers located in the 
same conventional bounds. The intelligence and influence of the religious 
press are disseminated through all parts of these local bodies, and instead of 
radiating from a common center, they cross each other in every direction. 
"When there is a multiplicity of papers it is impossible for them all to see 
alike and agree upon a line of policy to be pursued, and neither discipline 
nor unity of action can be established among so many moulders of public 
opinion. The facility with which newspapers can be established in these 
days produces a multitude of them, and as competition prevents any consid- 
erable profits, our ablest writers are rarely led to engage in these undertak- 
ings ; and even though it were a source of wealth our very ablest brethren 
rarely ever could be found to direct them all. Many such able brethren 
even abstain from writing for the religious press, for want of time, or through 
an aversion to being seen in the public prints. But nevertheless it is very 
evident that there is a necessity for both denominational schools and news- 
papers. This necessity may be pressing, and to supply it in a certain sense 
is to accomplish a denominational good, but it is not such a benefit for 
which alone denominational bodies are organized. In Baptist churches, in 
matters non-essential, all do not see alike because there is a diversity of 
interests and opinions. In the act of association by virtue of which a large 
number of Baptists form together a denominational body, for religious work, 
each individual has entered into the engagement with the whole body to 
promote the general welfare of the whole denomination, and the whole body 
likewise enters into the engagement with each individual, to facilitate for 
him the means of gratifying his peculiar notions, as near as may be, of 
what is the best policy to be pursued to advance the general denominational 
welfare. Hence prudence dictates, that where there are several fields of 
missionary labor, or several denominational enterprises thought well of and 
fostered by the same body, each individual should be left at liberty to cul- 
tivate whichever he pleases, and to throw the weight of his individual 
influence in that direction. This is the only basis of the tranquillity of 
these organizations in this regard, for both the body and the individuals who 
compose it reciprocally engage to advance the common denominational wel- 
fare, and as far as possible to promote the advantages and peculiar views of 
each member. These bodies therefore ought to prevent and carefully avoid 
whatever may hinder its own peace and the perfection of its own members, 
as whatever retards the progress of the one is equally injurious to the other. 

If it once be conceded that one denominational enterprise is to be pen- 
sioned at the denominational expense, it would prove difficult for the body 
to select which one is the most deserving and to deal with the subject with 
entire impartiahty ; the majority of the convention might regard these enter- 
prises only as useful and deserving of encouragement with which they were 
most in sympathy and those that inculcated their views, while the minority 
might be of a different opinion, thus giving rise to dissensions. We ought 
to remember that many of our worthy and struggling enterprises are started 
by private enterprise and capital, and those at the head of them might with 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 333 

some degree of justice think it wrong that their enterprises should be ignored 
and these bodies used to encourage the upbuilding of other similar under- 
takings. Every prudent and well-meaning denominational enterprise is 
honorable, as being beneficial to the denomination, and deserves encourage- 
ment. The more successful we can make it, the better it subserves the 
denominational good. It is not the business of these bodies to make dis- 
criminations in favor of one against another and thereby compel the churches 
to thus support and encourage them whether or not. The denomination 
can afford to have no favorites among deserving enterprises where they are 
all 3qually striving to build up the common cause. Its business is to see 
that equal justice is meted out to each. It cannot compel an unwilling 
minority to submit to these discriminations among private enterprises. It 
is an invasion of that equality of rights and privileges which is a fundamen- 
tal maxim of Baptist church goverment. When the door is once opened to 
it, there is no line at which we can stop and say with confidence that thus 
far we may go with safety and propriety, but no farther. When the denom- 
ination once enters upon the business of pensions we shall not fail to discover 
that the strong and powerful enterprises are those most likely to control 
these bodies, and that the interest of the weaker will be subordinated to that 
of the stronger. 

Wholesome rivalry between denominational enterprises producing emula- 
tion, conduces to the welfare of each ; and it is one of the glories of a con- 
vention to promote this feeling. A course of conduct which has an opposite 
effect is injurious to all alike and only retards their progress. The common 
interest of the denomination, which every loyal Baptist must regard above 
all other considerations, should serve in these cases to cement a community 
of interests among all rival enterprises. And, indeed, as belonging alike to 
the denomination, each of these interests is concerned indirectly and ulti- 
mately in the success of each other. The different enterprises in the same 
denomination, between whom the utmost desire exists for each other's welfare, 
may be to a certain extent competing, but ought never to be hostile aspirants 
in the same pursuit. AVhile the friendly and laudable competitor seeks only 
to outstrip by honorable means, and thereby increase the speed of him 
against whom he runs ; but the envious rival endeavors not merely to over- 
take, but to overthrow his opponent. This spirit has proved fatal to the 
prosperity of many denominational bodies and the interests they sought to 
foster. Some conventions and interests appear to be quite as intent on the 
injury of one. another, as on promoting the welfare of themselves. This, 
however, is a most dangerous and, indeed, a destructive policy. As im- 
possible is it to do good to one part of the body by injuring another part, as 
it is to advance one interest in a denomination by ruining another. The real 
foundation of the strength and vitality of the denomination is the mutual 
union and co-operation of all its varied interests. A balance between its 
contending interests should, moreover, be maintained as far as possible in 
every convention, and is as essential to preserve peace among the churches, 
as it is to maintain the balance of power and influence among rival enter- 



334 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

prises. And in each case, the strict preservation of this balance is the surest 
means of promoting harmony, and of preventing suspicion and jealousy, 
which mainly operate to hinder these rivals from becoming benefactors to 
each other. The writer once lived in the bounds of a certain convention in 
which there were two rival denominational papers about equally patronized 
by the members of the convention. So fierce was the competition and 
rivalry between them that they kept the convention in a constant turmoil 
and confusion. The churches, likewise caught the infection and were 
divided over them, and they elected delegates to the convention with a view 
to the formal endorsement of the one or the other, until finally the better 
judgment of the convention asserted itself, and a clause was ingrafted in the 
constitution that no endorsement of any papers should be allowed. Hence 
conventions and associations should be very careful about interfering with 
the quarrels of churches, or of rival denominational enterprises, unless they 
have the most urgent reasons for such intervention. For their own credit 
and for the sake of the cause, they should never do anything to provoke 
them. Whoever meddles in a quarrel of this nature, at once makes himself 
a party to it, unless he is invited by the contending parties so to do, and not 
then except in cases where this interposition is likely to have the result of 
putting an end to the disagreement, and restoring the blessings of peace. 
Such interference should be conducted in the most conciliatory and equitable 
manner towards both of the contending parties ; and a reference of these 
matters to a judicious council, appears to be the fairest mode of terminating 
the quarrel. 

As in the case of rival interests existing in the same convention, so also 
among difierent fields of missionary operations, it is desirable to maintain 
exact and equal justice, by Avhich suspicions and jealousies of one another 
become banished, and they are converted into mutual friends and promoters 
of the denominational welfare. The fear of this, whether apparent or real, 
is the surest cause of the destruction of that harmony which ought ever to 
subsist between destitute communities which hold intercourse one with 
another. The greater the ability of any convention to help these various 
fields of missionary labor, the greater is the necessity for the equal distribu- 
tion of such help as it can afford. Capacity of antagonism and aggression, 
which is most pernicious in a neighboring field, may be harmless in one 
which is a long distance from us. In regard to the preservation of the peace 
among these rival enterprises, it should be borne in mind that there are 
interests fostered by our conventions as well as forces which can be set off* 
and balanced one against the other, and which may operate both to unite 
various enterprises together, and also to contribute to the pacific and har- 
monious carrying on of operations in each particular locality. As much as 
possible, too, corresponding also with the case of the various rival interests 
in a convention, the several interests existing in different localities should be 
made to contribute according to their means to the mutual welfare of one 
another. All these various agencies and enterprises will thus serve to fuse 
into one another, and into one great family not only the different people of 
the same land, but those of like faith in foreign lands. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 335 

We do not question the right and propriety of Baptists, through the 
instrumentality of educational, or journalistic conventions, organized for the 
purpose of fostering these enterprises, to open the door to such discrimina- 
tions, but in Baptist associations and conventions proper, such as the churches 
lend their assistance to organize, having the spread of the gospel for their 
main object, such a policy is foreign to the genius of the churches, and if 
they would preserve the denominational tranquillity they will not authorize 
any departure from this policy. When a separate convention is organized 
to foster a particular enterprise, none need enter except such as are in full 
sympathy with the objects proposed. But in our regular bodies, organized 
solely for the purpose of spreading the gospel, unless all are in harmony and 
sympathy with the enterprise, it requires more prudence and wisdom than 
ordinarily falls to the lot of deliberative bodies to steer clear of the divisions 
arising from the unskillful handling of these delicate interests. Every pru- 
dently managed denominational enterprise deserves consideration and re- 
spect, because it makes an immediate figure in the grand total of all the 
agencies that makes us a great people. There is a perfect equality of rights 
between them. Consequently, none can naturally lay claim to any superior 
prerogative ; for whatever privileges any one of them claim from any con- 
sideration whatever, the other equally derives the same from the same 
source. However, as a large and extensive enterprise is more considerable 
in the denomination than a small one, it is reasonable that the latter 
should yield to the former, on occasions where one must necessarily yield to 
the other, as in our general assemblies, and should pay those mere ceremo- 
nial deferences which do not destroy their equality, and only shows a superi- 
ority of order, a first place among equals, taking into consideration the 
antiquity of the enterprise and length of service ; as it would be imprudent 
for the young to claim exaltation over the aged. As individuals, however, 
we can and will naturally assign the first place to the most meritorious, but 
when there is a diversity of opinions in an association or convention that has 
any regard for justice and the rules of propriety, we could not be induced to 
do so. We ought carefully to ward off imminent danger, to keep at a distance 
whatever is capable of causing its ruin. Hence the only proper rule dedu- 
cible from these general principles is, that, where there is danger of divi- 
sions, associations and conventions should never engage in any other work, 
and should never be organized for any other purpose than the spread of the 
gospel, in which all the churches can engage heartily, and in which there 
can be no dissensions and divisions. This course is especially preferable 
when dissensions and divisions arise in the denomination over the conduct of 
these enterprises. But in a great denomination, like that of the Baptists, 
in which religious training, a free church and free institutions are sought to 
be perpetuated, there is presented a strong case for the interposition of the 
denomination to take hold of every laudible enterprise which concerns the 
denominational well-being, and no narrow-minded selfishness ought to stand 
in the way of the accomplishment of these ends. The number of denomi- 
national schools established and endowed by any church is a sure index to 



336 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPEUDENCE ; 

the intelligence of its commmunicants, and their management should be 
characterized by the most consummate wisdom and prudence, by our denomi- 
national bodies. 

When we consider the unparalleled growth and spread of Baptist principles 
and what they have done for the world, the benefits resulting from a 
thoroughly diffused denominational education are incalculable, and the 
clumsy and awkward handling of our denominational institutions of learning 
by our conventions and associations ought not to be a drawback to the good 
work. The zeal of the denomination to make the best, better, to the entire 
exclusion of the humbler institutions ought not to create such a prejudice as 
will cripple the cause of education in general, and incidentally the spread of 
the gospel. It is the maintenance and upbuilding of all our Baptist institu- 
tions and enterprises, in all parts of our favored land, that has broken down 
the barriers which have heretofore divided and separated our people and 
made them one. The intelligence of the cities and the more cultivated 
districts was quickly diffused among all, when all, through the medium of 
the denominational press, were enabled to understand each other and their 
needs and wants. Nothing has contributed to the upbuilding of our Baptist 
cause so much as the placing of every church, every member, whether 
minister or layman, every enterprise, and every section of our land upon an 
equality ; and nothing so much to the maintenance of free institutions, and 
the general spread of the gospel, as the equal diffusion of education among 
the Baptist masses. Other denominations place much stress upon religious 
education, but they do not carry the thought much further than to suggest 
the practicability of a system of education which inures principally to the 
benefit of the ministry. It would be an achievement of infinitely greater 
importance to the cause of Christ, to found and endow many institutions, 
equally distributed, to educate our young men and women generally in the 
distinctive doctrine and practice of the churches. The broader the good 
seeds are cast the greater will be the harvest. This is what will render the 
denomination more solid, more easily governed, more coherent, and our prin- 
ciples better understood. Among Baptists small and insignificant beginnings 
often give rise to important consequences, and influence the destiny of genera- 
tions, through long courses of time. The few and poorly endowed Baptist 
schools which originated with our Baptist forefathers when our people were 
but a mere handful, have spread over every state in the Union, and have con- 
tributed more than any other cause to preserve the unity and identity of 
Baptist principles, the cause of religious and political liberty, and the spread 
of the gospel of the Son of Man. If any should be faint-hearted and need 
encouragement, let him imagine what American Baptists will be, under the 
blessings of God, an hundred years from to-day. It will present a spectacle 
from which the religious world will be able to derive instruction and 
edification. 

It must not be supposed that conventions have nothing to do with the found- 
ing of Baptist institutions of learning. It is an affair which concerns them 
particularly and falls within the province of their care. In Baptist church 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 337 

jurisprudence there is no precise line that can be drawn between those 
interests which affect the denominational weal, and those which have a rela- 
tion to private persons only. For as no system of ecclesiastical government 
can avoid interfering to some extent with the interests of individuals, so 
there is no denominational enterprise of a private nature but what may 
affect the whole denomination. It is not because there is any definite dis- 
tinction between the two classes of public and private, that conventions are 
bound to interfere in one instance, and yet to abstain in another. It 
depends upon who can most effectually and most advantageously for both 
the denomination and private parties, preside over and conduct the one and 
the other. Conventions, in many instances, originated colleges and other 
institutions of learning. So did these bodies first set on foot newspapers. 
By anticipating the usefulness of these helps to the gospel, the time was 
hastened when the people appropriated them to their own use. There were 
many interests which fell under the superintendence of conventions and 
associations in the early stages of our development, which cease to belong to 
it since we have become so strong. And there are others, where the care 
exercised by the denomination becomes more intense, in proportion as 
Baptist principles take root and spring up. There is one sure test which 
may be applied to all such questions ; one, however, which is not capable of 
being employed in any but Baptist church government. This test is af- 
forded by the rule of the majority; not the majority of a convention, 
promiscuously called together; not the majority of to-day or to-morrow,, 
but the majority of the whole denomination interested for a considerable 
series of years. We may be quite sure that if the denomination itself agrees. 
that a convention shall undertake the management of a particular interest, 
and adheres to this agreement after long experience of its effects, the 
arrangement is a wise and salutary one. Thus in this way some of our 
oldest and best institutions have grown up under the management of con- 
ventions and have become part and parcel of the denomination itself. 

Thus we have endeavored to lay down some of the maxims which underlie 
and grow out of Baptist conventions and associations. Liberty of action, 
thought and conscience is the basis of the whole system. We have seen that 
liberty consists, indeed, not in securing to each church and to each indi- 
vidual what is best for it and for him, but what they will and determine to 
be best for themselves. A church is not free that is compelled against its 
will to do what is most conducive to its own interest. But a church is free 
-that is allowed even to do that which is injurious to itself in so far as its 
actions do not interfere with the well-being of another church ; although, in 
this case, from inability to use that freedom aright, it may prove a bane in- 
stead of a blessing. It is, nevertheless, freedom still. It must not be for- 
gotten that liberty is not only the most perfect, but the most natural condi- 
tion of the churches, and if a church refuses to join in these associations, or 
being once united with one sees fit to withdraw therefrom, it cannot be inter- 
fered with. It is not merely that state which affords the fullest opportunity 
for the complete display of all its powers and energies ; but it is that in 
22 



838 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JUEISPEUDENCE ; 

which it was originally placed and left by the apostles, and in which it should 
always remain unless it sees fit voluntarily to change its condition. Eccle- 
siastical usurpation and despotism, on the other hand, consists in the exer- 
cise of authority and dominion over the churches of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
so as to prevent the churches from acting according to the impulse of their 
own will or determination, so as to act contrary to that liberty wherewith 
Christ has made them free. 

There is, indeed, a great and essential difference between subjection by 
consent and subjection by compulsion. In the one case, the churches obey 
a fixed and reasonable law in common with sister churches, to which they 
voluntarily consent, and in order to secure the common good, and the com- 
mon liberty of all. In the other case, they obey an uncertain and arbitrary 
rule imposed by a foreign power without authority of the gospel, which 
exists only for the good of the ruler, and to the injury and injustice of the 
churches obliged to submit to it. Among Baptists obedience to all law and 
rule outside of the local church is voluntary ; to be compelled to obey any 
other law is slavery and compulsion. Outside of his own church every Bap- 
tist subjects himself to legitimate rule in the discipline which he imposes on 
his own conduct. Every one resists and abhors ecclesiastical slavery, and 
recoils from it as injurious alike to his church and to his denomination, and 
to his own individual interests. In this sense, therefore, every Baptist and 
every Baptist church is free. In the other, every church and every mem- 
ber is in bonds. 

The good seed sown by Baptists are beginning to take root and spring up 
everywhere, and these will continue, in the same direction, as heretofore, 
changes in church government. That fostering of individuality which ac- 
companies the teaching of Baptist principles, must cause an increase of local 
church independence in all religious organizations. And along with the 
acquirement of complete autonomy by each religious body, there is likely 
to be a complete loss of priestly authority by any one who plays the unscrip- 
tural part of a church ruler. That relinquishment of priestly authority 
which has already gone far among protestants and dissenters, will ultimately 
become entire. Indeed all the divisions and dissensions that have occurred 
since the days of the apostles may be traced immediately to priestly rule 
and domination over the churches. The first departure was by the Catho- 
lics in the second or third century. Then sprang up the Noetians, Nova- 
tians, Meletians, Aerians, Donatists, Joannites, Haesitanes, Timotheans and 
Athingani. Then later, some time about the twelfth century, sprang up the 
Arnoldites in Italy, the Pretrobrusians and Caputiati in France, and later 
the Stedingers in Germany and the Apostolicalsin Italy; all characterized 
by the assertion of ecclesiastical freedom in both faith and practice. Then 
came the Lollards in England ; the Fraticelli in Italy ; the Taborites, Bohe- 
mian Brethren, Moravians and Hussites, in Bohemia ; all rebelling against 
priestly authority and church discipline. Then all are acquainted with the 
rebellion of Luther in Germany, the Zwinglians and Calvinists in Switzer- 
land, the Huguenots in France, the Presbj^terians in England — all chafing 



OR, THE COMMON LAAV OF THE GOSPEL. 339 

under church sacerdotolism as tyranical as it was ruinous to the cause of 
Christianity. Possibly, however, the most notable revolt against the priestly 
hierarchy was that inaugurated in the reign of Henry VIII. by the Epis- 
copalians. While it was a warfare by the episcopacy against the papacy, it 
was a step towards freedom of judgment and practice in religious matters, 
accompanied by a denial of the right of one man to rule the religious world. 
Yet it was but one step in the right direction. They still cling to the uni- 
versal church idea which hovered over the whole people forgetting that 
where there is a universal church government erected there must be a uni- 
versal church ruler who in time becomes as despotic as the one against 
whom they rebel. This church, though backed up by the secular arm of 
the British government is split in twain. I refer to its divisions into high 
and low, and broad and narrow ; all showing more or less the spirit inhe- 
rent in the nature of man to throw off the yoke of ministerial domination. 
The strange anomily among them is, while asserting priestly authority, they 
are themselves seeking to perpetuate priestly authority. They forget the 
Scriptural injunction. Come out from among them, oh my people. The same 
can be said of the great flimily of Methodist churches which have for the 
same reason sprung from the Episcopal establishment. They erect the same 
overshadowing power from which they were forced to rebel. It shows us 
the re-growth of a coercive priestly rule similar in kind and allied to that 
against Avhich there had been rebellion. A Methodist bishop is a complete 
pope in miniature, ruling the church with an iron hand. Calvin was a pope 
comparable with any who issued bulls from the Vatican. The Presbyterians 
allied themselves with the State and their discipline was as despotic, as 
rigorous and as relentless as any which the Catholics had enforced. The 
otherwise Godly Puritans of Kew England were as severe in their persecu- 
tions, as were the ecclesiastics of the churches they left behind. And our 
dear good Methodist brethren have developed organizations scarcely less 
priestly, and in some respects more coercive, than the church from which 
they spring. 

Thus, it is seen, how assiduously our churches have warded off the en- 
croachments of associations and conventions, and how steadfastly they have 
maintained their sovereignty and independence. Churches can be churches 
without associations and conventions, but the latter cannot exist without the 
churches. They have never been inveigled into the snare of conferring 
power and jurisdiction upon these extra-ecclesiastical bodies, knowing that 
it is the inherent quality of power to increase and become uncontrollable. 
They know who Caesar i?, and how to keep out of his clutches, and what is 
due to him ; for, with the utmost vigilance, they stand ready to defend both 
their civil and religious rights against all the powers of earth, who, by force 
and usurpation, have endeavored to destroy them. In church government, 
all belongs to God and nothing to Csesar. When Christ said. Render wit9 
CiBsar that which belongs io Ccesar, he did not mean that all was his. Any 
power outside of a local church is magisterial, and not ministerial, secular, 
and not spirtual, human, and not divine. 



340 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 



CHAPTER XII. 

ECCLESIASTICAL CREEDS; HOW THEY ARE GENERATED, AND THEIR USE 
AND ABUSE IN CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 

THE churclies of our Lord Jesus Christ are denominated the ground and 
pillar of the truth. Hence as such it becomes their duty to guard well 
the doctrine of the gospel, and to keep it pure and undefiled. For it is by 
the preaching of false doctrines that errors have come into the world and 
Christian communities led astray, not only from the truth as it is in our Lord 
and Saviour, but hkewise from the true form of church government. As 
under the Bible system of church government, councils have much to do 
with questions of heresy it comes appropriately within the purview of this 
treatise to lay down a few of the maxims relating thereto. 

In the outset it is safe to lay this down as a true proposition, that after 
the apostles had finished the work assigned them, had done preaching the 
gospel, and laid the foundations for the churches, and shaped their polity, the 
faith and practice of the gospel was entire. It was so, long before they died, 
but after their death the doctrine and polity of the churches were sealed and 
ratified by the churches, and there could be nothing added to, or taken 
from it, but our obedience and consent. As it was in the beginning, so it 
is now. If it was Christ's and the apostles' faith, it is and must be ours, and 
ours it ought not to be, if it was not theirs. Whatever the apostles taught 
we must equally believe, if we equally know it. But all that the apostles 
taught is not equally necessary to be taught ; only so much as upon the 
knowledge and belief of which our salvation depends. Whatsoever is in the 
Scriptures is alike true, but whatsoever is there is not alike necessary to 
salvation, nor alike useful, nor alike easy to be understood. But whatever 
the Scriptures teach to be true of God, that we must believe, and we cannot 
disbelieve it without disowning God. For the saving faith of every Christian 
is not made up of every true proposition found in the Scriptures, but of 
those things which are the foundation of our belief in Christ, which said 
foundation is the necessary belief, without which nothing can subsist either 
in religion or church polity. 

There are two precepts which concern the virtue of fiiith, or our obligation 
to believe divine truths. The one is affirmative, whereby we are obliged to 
have a specific and positively explicit belief of some chief articles of the 
Christian faith. The other is termed negative, which strictly binds us not to 
disbelieve ; that is, not to believe the contrary of any one point sufiiciently 
represented to our understanding, as revealed in the written word of God. 
These afiirmative precepts enjoin some acts to be performed, but not at all 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 341 

times or places, nor does it equally bind all sorts of persons m respect to all 
things to be believed. For as to things to be believed, it is very evident that 
some are more necessary to be explicitly believed than others ; either be- 
cause they are in themselves greater and more weighty, or because they in- 
struct us in some necessary duty towards God, or the organic church of 
which we are members. As to persons, no doubt but some are obliged to 
know and believe more than others, by reason of their office, vocation, 
J capacity or the like. 

No church member can be innocently ignorant of that which all churches 
have ever believed and publicly professed, and about which there has never 
been any dispute. Especially no Christian can be innocently ignorant of 
that which all churches teach to be necessary to salvation. Because every 
Baptist who unites with the church is supposed to know it is necessary that 
he learn something, or another, in order to his salvation, and if he has 
learned anything experimentally, then it is certainly that which is necessary 
to his own salvation ; and nothing can teach us so readily those necessary 
things as the whole denomination ; for if these things are so indisputably 
true as that all the churches teach these universal doctrines as necessary, 
then it is taught everywhere and at all times, and, therefore, to be ignorant 
of such things can never be supposed innocent. What God has made 
necessary to be known, he has given sufficient means by which it can be 
known. Hence there should never be any violent disputations and disbelief 
allowed over things necessary to salvation ; for by disputing men often make 
more intrigues, but seldom manifestations of what is obscure and uncertain. 

To keep this doctrine immaculate and incorrupted, without mixture of 
error, has been the care and glory of Baptists in all ages of the world. 
One of the greatest agencies in its preservation has been to separate doctrine 
from dis^cipline, faith from practice, and to put down nothing as law con- 
cerning doctrine that is the device of the brain of man. Hence, Baptists 
have no authoritatively written creed. For such is the condition and con- 
stitution of Baptist churches that nothing in the way of a formulated creed 
can be so perfectly framed as not to give some testimony of human error, 
and frequently to stand in need of reparation and amendment. Many 
things are unknown to the wisest, and the best men can never wholly divest 
themselves of their passions and affection, and by this means the best and 
wisest are sometimes led into error, and stand in need of successors like 
themselves, who may find remedies for the errors they have committed, and 
nothing can or ought to be permanent, in the way of a church creed, but 
that which is perfect. No natural body was ever so well tempered and organ- 
ized as not to be subject to diseases, wounds, or other accidents, and to need 
medicines and other occasional helps, as well as nourishment and exercise; 
and the denomination which, under the fear of innovation, would deprive 
itself of improvement by reducing its creed to human formulas, condemns 
itself to perish by the defects of its own foundations. Baptists observing 
this have ever refrained from formulating a creed, and have felt a necessity 
of leaving the tenets of their faith to the integrity of Scriptural principles, 



842 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

tlius examining whether those principles be orthodox or heterodox, or so 
orthodox that nothing can be added to it; and this being so, those who will 
admit of no change would render errors perpetual, and depriving themselves 
of the benefits of wisdom and experience, would oblige all to continue in 
the interpretations of their ancestors without the pains and the responsibility 
of examining for themselves, whether the doctrine be Scriptural or not. 
Thus a true creed, in this and other respects, is self-adjusting and self- 
balancing. Its centrifugal and its centripetal forces are necessarily in cor- 
respondence, because the one generates the other. And so we find that the 
forms of both religion and governmental rule — faith and practice — follow 
the same law. Organic as this relationship is in its origin, no artificial inter- 
ference, in the way of creed manufacturing, can permanently affect it. 
Whatever changes an external agency may seem to produce, they are soon 
neutralized in fact, if not in appearance. 

For the church of Christ to undertake to reduce the Scriptures to written 
formulas and to attempt to seal them as divine verities, is but to detract 
from the inspired record that authority and reverence which belongs to it 
as the veritable word of God, although the doctrine to be believed be of 
itself neither material nor necessary to salvation ; because the quantity or 
greatness of the sin of human creed-making is not measured so much -by the 
thing which is affirmed as by the measure and authority whereby it is sought 
to be vouched for and verified, and by the insult and injury that is thereby 
offered to God in attempting to apply the church's seal and testimony Xo 
that which may be a falsehood, and inducing and obliging the Christian 
world to do the same. For whatever is proved must be verified by some- 
thing more evident than itself. It is as injurious to God's truth to disbe- 
lieve things by him revealed, as it is also to formulate in another creed as 
revealed truths things not revealed ; as in commonwealths it is as heinous an 
offense to coin money either by counterfeiting the metal as it is to counter- 
feit the stainps, or to apply the great seal of state to a writing that is a for- 
gery, although the contents of the writing might be true; for the Holy 
Spirit has said ; If any shall add to these things God will add unto him the 
plagues which are written in this book. Salvation cannot be hoped for with- 
out true faith. Now faith, according to those who put their trust in written 
creeds, depends, in a large measure upon the creed itself, and human creeds 
depend on the skill and knowledge of the men who write them, in whom 
nothing is more certain than a most certain possibility to err. Hence Bap- 
tists have ever held that in matters necessary to salvation the Scriptures are 
so clear that all such necessary truths are either manifestly contained 
therein or may be deduced therefrom, and need not the authority of any 
church or council to authoritatively pronounce upon them to give them force 
and verity. 

They who sit down to formulate a creed often take their desire that a doc- 
trine should be so, for a sufficient reason that it is so, and in looking upon 
the Scriptures through such spectacles as these, they are apt to appear to us 
of that color which pleases our fancies best, and will seem to say in many 



OE, THE COMMON" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 343 

respects not what they do say, but what you would have them say ; as if we 
might say that the same kind of food, prepared in the same way, has in 
every man's mouth that very taste which was most agreeable to his palate. 
The presumptions imposing of human creeds upon the consciences of men, 
and putting of the senses of men upon the word of Gcd ; the vain conceit 
that we can speak of the doctrines of God better than they are spoken of in 
the word of God itself; the sacrilegious deifying of our own interpretations 
and imposing them upon others ; the restraining of the word of God from 
that latitude, and the understanding of men from that liberty, wherein 
Christ and the apostles left them is now, and has ever been the only found- 
ation of all the schisms of the church and that which makes divisions per- 
petual. Take away these walls of separation and put the pure and unde- 
filed word of God in the hands of the people, and all Christendom will soon 
be one. Tear down all church heirarchy which is the devil's means to sup- 
port and perpetuate errors, and restore all believers to their just and full 
liberty of adjusting their own understandings to the Scripture only, and soon 
all men would be reduced to unity and to the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, 
as the rivers when they have free passage all flow to the ocean. 

Neither can churches or councils by the formulation of a written creed 
make that a truth or falsehood which before was not so ; so neither can they 
make or declare that to be an article of faith, or a heresy which before was 
not so. If either a church or council have a commission at large from 
Christ to make a creed and teach it for doctrine and call it the gospel of 
Christ let the letters patent from heaven be produced for it. Shall the yoke 
of Christ which he said was easy, be thus made heavier and the narrow way 
be made narrower than he left it by adding new articles to the faith of the 
gospel? If this may be done why did our Saviour reprove the Pharisees so 
sharplv for binding heavy burdens and laying them on men's shoulders, 
teaching for doctrine men's traditions ? If the Scriptures be sufficient to 
inform us what the true faith is, it must be of necessity sufficient to teach 
us what heresy is ; seeing that heresy is nothing but a manifest deviation 
from and an opposition to the faith of the gospel as the crooked line 
deviates from the straight and the one cannot but manifest the other. If 
one whose calling it is to interpret and preach the Scriptures should obstin- 
ately contradict the truth of anything therein laid down ; who does not see 
that every one who knows and believes the Scriptures has a sufficient means 
to discover and condemn and avoid such heresy without a formulated human 
creed by which to measure the truth or falsity of what is taught. That 
which is necessary to salvation is so plain that it needs no interpretation ; 
that in non-essentials, to believe this or that to be the true sense of them, 
and to avoid the false it is not necessary either to faith or salvation for it 
cannot be in keeping with reason that if God would have had his meaning 
in these places certainly known he would not have spoken so obscurely. And 
how can man know certainly the meaning of these words and truths which 
he himself has not revealed ? Hence those who feel authorized to formulate 
a creed to be believed by the churches should produce their Scriptural 



344 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

authority from the King of heaven and to show why they take upon them- 
selves to reduce to written formulas the verities of the Scriptures. 

Baptists without a written creed and credal statements as a denomination 
have maintained a steadfast adherence to evangelical belief, and are, as a 
people, all at unity about matters of faith, which unity is a conclusive 
assurance that those necessary and essential things, upon which they are so 
agreed, come from some common fountain, and that fountain is no other 
than the Holy Scriptures. This great denomination has never taught them- 
selves to say that it is so, because the creed says so, but rather God, 
speaking through the Scriptures, says so, therefore, it is true. When many 
churches of all ages and different times and places unanimously affirm the 
same thing, for truth, this ought to be ascribed to an universal cause, 
which, in such questions as these, can be nothing else than either a right 
deduction from the principles of the Scriptures, or else some common agree- 
ment, which must rest on the foundation of the truth, as it is in Christ. If 
God has not commanded us to believe a doctrine, no human or ecclesiastical 
power can command us to profess to believe it. 

Effete formulas of faith are, in practice, what a syllogism is without truth- 
fulness. They cannot be so complete as to need no addition, and so evident 
as to need no interpretation. Now when we consider the inspiration of the 
writers of the Holy Scripture, we conclude that these writers are capable of 
both of these perfections. No church council or synod can set down in 
writing so perfect a rule of faith, and add to it the verities of what was laid 
down by the inspired writers of the Bible ; neither can there be set down 
such infallible interpretations of that which we consider the obscurities in 
the faith, as shall need no further interpretations. That is not a true and 
a self-evident interpretation, which needs again to be interpreted. There 
may be a reckless use of words, and a false process of reasoning, by the use 
of which, the creed-maker finds himself entangled in absurdities, as a man 
in the quicksand, the more he struggles, the deeper he sinks. For the 
errors of words illy chosen multiply themselves, and lead men into absurdi- 
ties, which at last they see, but cannot avoid, without recanting all they 
have said, and begin to reckon anew from the begining, in which lies the 
foundation of all their errors. From whence it follows, that they which 
trust to ready-made creeds, do as they who cast up many little sums into a 
greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up 
or not ; and at last finding the error in the addition, and not mistrusting 
their first grounds, know not how to rectify their mistake. And in wrong 
or no definitions, lies the first error, from which proceed all false and sense- 
less tenets. This m.akes those denominations, that take their ideas of 
doctrine from ready-made creeds, and authors, and not from the text of the 
Scriptures, to be as much below the condition of ignorant men, as men 
endowed with a love of the truth are above it. For between the truth and 
erroneous doctrine, ignorance is in the middle. So he, who takes up con- 
clusions on the trust of others, and does not deduce them from the fountain 
of all truth, does not know anything, but only believes he knows something. 



845 

Ignorance of the signification of words, which is nothing more than a want 
of understanding, disposes men to take on trust, not only the truth they 
know not, but also the errors, and nonsense of those they trust, for neither 
error nor nonsense can, without a perfect understanding of words, be detected. 

Oftener than otherwise, those who undertake to formulate a written creed 
become manifest aud common perverters and corrupters of the Scriptures. 
There is dauger of addition, substraction and alteration of the divine text, 
altogether different from the mind of the Holy Spirit. In matters of faith 
man cannot be obliged by the church, but to what, either formally or 
virtually, he is obliged by God ; for all just power in ecclesiastical matters 
is from God, and he is the only infallible judge of controversies, between 
man and man, and between church and church. He has not set up any one 
man, or set of men to be judge of doctrine and controversies about doctrine. 
Neither has he set up the Scriptures to be a judge of such controversies, but 
has explicitly laid it down as an infallible rule by which to judge them, and 
has established the local church to be that judge. She it is, to whom, in 
doubts concerning faith and religion all Baptists must have recourse. Her 
rulings, her decrees, and her adjudications, are not claimed to be infallible, 
but to her Christ has ascribed ecclesiastical judicature. 

A marked distinction must be made between the Scriptures as a rule, and 
the church as a judge. Because a church is the sole judge of controversies 
is no sign that it is infallible ; for we have many judges and courts in the land 
giving judgment in matters not to be appealed from, yet none of them are 
infallible. And again every man in our churches is a judge for himself 
what religion is truest ; and yet no one will contend that every man is 
infallible. The nature and properties of a judge cannot in common reason 
agree to any mere writing, although it be God's word, for a writing is 
deaf, dumb and inanimate. On the other hand by a judge, we understand a 
person imbued with life and reason, able to hear, to examine, to declare his 
mind to the disagreeing parties, in such a way as that each one may know 
whether the sentence be in favor of his cause or against his pretence. A 
church can do all this, as the diversity of controversies, persons, occasions 
and circumstances may require. This the Scriptures cannot do, although it 
may furnish the rule, by which it can be done, and it alone can do no more. 
There must be some effectual means to beget, and conserve the faith of the 
gospel, to maintain unity, to discover and condemn heresies, to appease and 
reduce them, and to determine all controversies in religion. A human creed, 
being but a fallible guide, conceived by the brain of man, is not the rule by 
which it can l^e done. For without the Scriptures, as a rule, the church 
would not be furnished with an infallible guide, sufficient to maintain and 
perpetuate the truth, nor could it be considered that God had offered sufficient 
means to attain that end to which he has ordained the churches. 

That the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments contain the whole and 
perfect will and law of God, is affirmed by Baptists and all Baptist churches; 
that the Scriptures are not a perfect rule of faith and practice, but that, 
not only a written creed and a formulated code of laws are to be added to 



846 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJECH JTJRISPEUDENCE ; 

make it a full repository of tlie divine will, is at least the logical affirma- 
tion of those who depend upon such helps to supplement the law of God. 
Baptists have never delivered so much as the least thing of the holy mys- 
teries of faith, without the affirmative declaration of the Divine Scriptures. 
They take no credit for what is spoken or written, unless it be demonstrated 
by the Scriptures, for that is not the security of our faith, which is deposited 
in written formularies, creeds and books of discipline, but from the demon- 
stration of the Scriptures ; for this holy record must be the sole rule of all 
faith and all religion, and therefore sufficient to reprove all vice and every 
heresy. He who is an heretic, two to one, is not such from a faithful read- 
ing and study of the Scriptures, but made such by the study of heretical 
writers and creed makers, who believe not that the Scriptures alone contain 
all the will and word of God ; for the Scriptures lead us to God, and open 
to us the knowledge of God, and constitute a complete bar to the entrance 
of heretics, and like a strong gate, are sufficient to keep out heresies. What- 
soever is of the word of God, whatsoever ought to be known or preached of 
the doctrine, is so contained in the Scriptures that, besides this sacred text, 
there is nothing that may be believed or preached ; which we must so firmly 
believe that, besides this, it is not lawful for us to hear, either man or angel; 
and, indeed, it were not to be imagined how the Scriptures could be a^anon 
or rule of faith to Christians if it were so imperfect that it did not alone 
contain the full and complete measure of faith and practice. For Christ, 
speaking through the Scriptures, is the author and finisher of our faith, which 
the churches are to preach and believe, not to enlarge or shorten, not to 
alter or diversify, by attempting to reduce it to written formulas, for which 
there is no authority in the Scriptures ; which being delivered by Christ and 
his apostles is not to be written with paper and ink, but in the fleshy tables 
of our hearts. 

In the earliest centuries of the churches, written creeds and formulas of 
worship were unknown among Christians. Not until the full establishment 
of the Episcopal hierarchy, in the reign of Constantino, overthrowing the 
apostolic form of church government, have we any account of written form- 
ulas of faith. It is very certain that they did not orginate with the apostles ; 
that neither they nor the early Evangelists supplied the churches with a 
written creed, aside from the word of God, otherwise it would have been 
added to the canon of the Scriptures, and would have been preserved as 
carefully and with as little alteration as the gospels themselves, and certainly 
would have been cited and referred to in the contests with heretics and schis- 
matics. That if the churches had used such formulas for the two or three 
hundred years after they were founded, it is incredible that no ecclesiastical 
writer should neither mention, cite, or even allude to them during that long 
period. Indeed, so plain, and so easy to be understood, and so simple were 
the doctrines of the gospel, that the first churches no more needed written 
formulas to guide them than Baptist churches now do, which at this day 
keep the peace in the bonds of unity without such helps. If anything be 
added to, or taken from the gospel, and pretended to be necessary, it cannot 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 347 

be entertained, unless they that add it and impose it be infallible in their 
judgment and competent in their authority ; they must have authority equal 
to that of Christ, and wisdom equal to that of the apostles. For the 
apostles in the summaries of faith, laid down in the Scriptures, declared all 
that was, at that time, necessary, and if any man else makes a new neces- 
sity, he must claim Christ's power, for he only is our law-giver. 

Baptists have ever held that it is infinitely necessary, that for the matter 
of faith, we rest our behef upon the Scriptures, and go no further. For if 
there can be any new necessities then they may forever increase, and no 
man could be sure that his faith shall not be condemned by the pretended 
discovery and addition of new articles of faith, until we all shall be in dan- 
ger and doubt and scruple, and there shall be neither peace of mind, nor 
tranquillity of the churches, as we see at this day in the sad divisions of 
Christendom ; and every man, from the standpoint of his own written creed, 
condemns all but his own sect, who have subscribed thereto, and no man 
can tell who is in the right, by a perusal of these man-made formularies, for- 
getting, the fact that nothing can make anything to be of divine faith, but 
our blessed Lord himself, who is, therefore, called the author and finisher of 
our faith ; he began it, and made an end of it, in the Holy Scriptures. The 
apostles themselves could not do it, they were only stewards and dispensers 
of the mysteries of God. They did rightly divide the word of life, separat- 
ing the necessary from that which was not so ; no man, no council, or society 
of men, could do this but themselves, for none but they could tell what was 
a true article of faith ; they were to lay the foundation, and they did so, and 
they built wisely upon it by reducing to writing under the inspiration of the 
Holy Spirit, the necessary doctrine in a form of words, and consigned it to 
all the churches, commanding them that they should keep the foundation. 

While we emphasize the fact that Baptists have no authoritatively writ- 
ten creed, yet it must not be understood that there is among us no standard 
of belief, which the churches feel bound to uphold and contend for. A 
creed is a necessity for man. Condemned already is he who believes noth- 
ing. There is no nothingness in the Christian religion, nothing does not 
exist, nothing is nothing. Man is emphatically a creature of belief. It is 
his bread of life By belief he lives, by disbelief he dies. Believe and live, 
disbelieve and die, is the language of holy writ. It is true many of our 
churches use printed articles of faith, for the convenience of reference, and 
especially for the instruction of those coming into the communion of the 
churches. But they are in no sense authoritative, and there is no uni- 
formity, either as to the use of such articles, or as to their phrasing, and they 
do not constitute for any Baptist a standard of belief or faith. These arti- 
cles of faith are not the result of any preconceived design on the part of any 
one man or set of men, to formulate them for the use and adoption of all 
churches, but they are the result of a consensus of opinion, which not being 
authoritatively written, was preserved only by a uniform interpretation and 
a continuous use, which have given these matters of belief the sanction of 
articles of faith, which aU Baptist churches have agreed to and stand ready 



348 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJUCH JURISPEUDENCE ; 

to defend. When many churches of different times and places thus unani- 
mously affirm the same thing for truth, this is to be ascribed to an universal 
cause, which in such questions as these can be nothing else than a right 
deduction from the principles of the Scriptures, and derives its authority 
from the unanimous approbation and concurrent testimony of all churches 
of the same faith and order. Its proofs and its sources are the same with, 
and are analagous to, the civil and common law, as practiced in secular gov- 
ernments, and the unwritten customary law of the churches, heretofore de- 
scribed, and is evidenced by the unanimous testimony of a long line of men, 
skilled and learned in the law of the churches. For that which all men 
have at all times learned, and believed, the Holy Spirit must have taught, 
as doctrines learned and preserved by all the churches, and lasting many 
ages must rest on the foundation of the truth. Many eyes see more than 
one. The collected vnsdom of a people much surpasses that of a single per- 
son ; and though he should truly seek that which is true, it is not probable 
he would so easily find it as the whole body of the denomination who have 
studied the truth and have come to a consensus of opinion concerning it. 

All that Baptists have ever contended for in reference to articles of faith, 
is that they ought to spring from an historical basis of gradual development, 
and not come full-grown from the head of some ecclesiastical legislator^ that 
there ought always in church jurisprudence to be a continued chain of con- 
nection between the past and the future, through the medium of the present. 
Articles of faith proper are developed by the spontaneous and unconscious 
action of thedenominationalmind, and arethenatural and undesigned offspring 
of a certain peculiar belief; while a ready-made creed is the conscious inven- 
tion of a single mind, formed upon a preconceived plan, for a definite pur- 
pose, that is to say, to round out a theory, and to shape a system. This 
organic creation — a ready-made creed — may be contrasted with the forma- ^ 
tion of a government, or an institution by a single act of legislation at one 
sitting, as a metal statue is cast in a foundry. If you were in doubt as to 
what is here meant see what twisted and distorted exegesis results from the 
attempt to interpret the whole field of revelation — doctrine as well as prac- 
tice — through formulas ; this, we may judge from a Methodist book of dis- 
cipline, a Presbyterian digest of overtures, or a collection of Pontificial bulls. 
If faith and doctrine were a subject upon which all men were agreed, or, if 
there were any one living authority on religious questions, to which they 
were willing to defer, if religious opinions were not a matter, among Bap- 
tists, of conscious conviction, and maintained from a sense of moral obliga- 
tion — if they looked upon religion as an article to be procured at the 
cheapest cost, and for which they would make no spiritual sacrifice — then 
the influence of ready-made creeds in propagating the peculiar religious 
opinions of the creed maker, would and ought to be decisive. 

In the very nature of things, Baptists have no authoritatively formulated 
creed. That is to say, there is no verbal statement of belief that has ever 
been voted upon and adopted by the denomination. There are no articles 
of faith to which a member must specifically assent before he becomes a 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 349 

memuer of a Baptist church, and hence they have no articles binding upon 
all the members of the church. For a creed is simply a belief, though it 
may never have been written down upon paper. The faith which a man 
clings to and positively believes is really his creed. While, therefore, Bap- 
tists differ among themselves, as the members of all churches do, yet there 
are certain fundamental points on which they are all agreed. No creed is 
to be regarded as a final statement of the truth. If instead of considering it 
simply a statement of present belief, it should be looked upon as a humanly 
perfect and entire epitome of doctrine ; if it should be imagined that it con- 
tains not merely the truth stated, but the whole truth and nothing but the 
truth, so that nothing can be added to it or taken from it, then it becomes, 
or at least is apt to become, a snare to our feet and an injury to our souls. 
It will so enslave us that we will no longer stand fast in the liberty where- 
with Christ has made us free — the liberty of ranging unchallenged through 
the whole domain of truth. We do not, therefore, regard the best creed 
as perfect, final and complete, although it were lawful to reduce it to \vrit- 
ing. Baptists look for new truths and new statements of old ones. No man 
or church can set bounds to the progress of religious truth, and say to the 
inquiring spirit : " Thus far and no further shalt thou go." To the law and 
to the testimony is the language of Baptists. If the creed agrees not with 
these, it is because there is no light in it. Every Baptist believer has, there- 
fore, the right, and is under the obligation to study, discern, promulgate and 
defend the truths of the gospel. For these ends he is to go himself to the 
Scriptures and form his views of divine truth, untrammeled by creeds and 
unterrified by suspicions of not being in strict harmony therewith. This 
attitude towards creeds puts pre-eminence and honor on the Scriptures, but 
does not dishonor the creed. 

Thus we see that a creed, or rather the manner of evolving one, from a 
Baptist standpoint, is quite difierent from a creed in the ordinary acceptation 
of the term. It is not a form of words, which any church or council feel 
authorized to formulate authoritatively, and to impose upon the churches 
nolens volens, but it is rather an instrument which every Baptist feels himself 
authorized to regard, not as the work of a single enhghtened man, a church, 
or council, but as something drawn out and adopted by the wisdom of all the 
churches, and of aU the ages, not because it is a written creed formulated by 
any human authority, but because it was first tested, tried and adapted before 
it was written. Such a document draws its force, in truth, not from its scant 
and often irrelevant language, but from its stamping, in visible and lasting 
forms forever, the essential parts of the ecclesiastical consciousness of the 
whole Baptist family of the earth expressing themselves in the interpretation 
of God's word. It is by a long series of such material proofs that the 
ecclesiastical sentiment and belief of Baptists are framed, and it is far more 
the strength of this sentiment itself than the mere words of such a document, 
interpreted like any other written law, that constitutes its ecclesiastical efficacy. 
These doctrines and truths, so evolved out of the Scriptures and laid down by 
Baptists, have been translated into written law and into articles of faith, 



S50 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; 

which have been wrought out by slow degrees and faithful effort, by a faith- 
ful people and is a part of their ecclesiastical heritage, to be handed down to 
their followers. Thus it becomes the medium of transmitting to posterity a 
knowledge of what is believed by the church of Christ at particular times, 
in behalf of the truth as it is in Christ, and is a precious legacy to be trans- 
mitted to those who come after us, in the succeeding ages, bearing its testi- 
mony in support of the true doctrine of the gospel. We resort to all the 
pious writings of all the most eminent Baptist divines, and authors, in all 
ages, who have had for their object to elucidate and shed light upon the 
word of God, in order to find out what is the true interpretation of the 
cardinal principles of the Holy Scriptures. This is infinitely safer than to 
depend upon the wisdom of one man, or a council of men, who sit down 
ostensibly to reduce the Scriptures to the formulas of faith, with the presumed, 
and pretended, authority to impose them upon the churches of Christ. For, 
as has been observed before, it cannot be said that the words of the common 
creed maker are the words of the Holy Spirit, and for that reason true. 

In this way the churches may effectually erect a standard of belief by 
which discords may be banished and the doctrine of the churches kept pure 
and the whole denomination kept peaceful, without an odious array of 
written creeds and confessions of faith. For what matter is it whether a 
creed or a standard of doctrine be reduced to writing, or be registered only 
in the minds of the membership, and applied by them as a body ? It is no 
less a creed although it be nuncupative, and as long as such a test is faith- 
fully applied the churches cannot fail of being, in a good degree, united and 
harmonious, and it most effectually operates as a bond of union and a barrier 
against the encroachments of heresy. Baptists ought to be considered then 
as having all the security that the nature of the case admits of, as much so 
as those whose church manuals are loaded down with written creeds, and 
confessions of faith. What other denominations accomplish by written 
creeds and confessions of faith. Baptists attempt and accomplish more effectu- 
ally by denominational common, or customary law, by which new doctrines 
must be tried and tested before adopted, new practices proved before being 
wholly approved; The old doctrines are not always the best, but the old is 
safer than the new, until we have better ones. And we have no way of 
knowing whether the new be better than the old, until time, long usage, and 
experience shall prove their efficacy and orthodoxy. As to polity the 
churches need rules ; and the Scriptures give but few. Nor has any church, 
a council or any convention any authority to formulate a code of laws, and 
thrust them upon the denomination. These principles, whether of doctrine 
or practice, do not spring up suddenly. They arise very slowly, and are but 
the conserving, and preserving of the united judgment, and experience of the 
whole denomination, and with equal slowness do they depart from this 
doctrine and practice, based upon this long experience, without a rational, 
and an experimental ground of departure. 

The Scripture says. How can two walk together unless they be agreed f If 
every one undertook to form all his own opinions, and to seek for truth in 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 351 

isolated paths blazed out by himself alone, it would follow that no consider- 
able number of even Baptists would ever unite in any common belief. This 
is illustrated by reference to our Christian brethren — who have not even yet 
been able to agree upon a suitable name for their church. Scarcely any two 
of them agree upon any one cardinal doctrine to be taught by the church 
for want of a consensus of opinion upon the subject. But obviously without 
such common belief no church can prosper, nay, rather, no church can 
exist ; for without doctrines held in common by a denomination, there is no 
common action, and without common action there may still be Christians, 
but there can be no churches. In order, therefore, that churches and denomi- 
nations should exist, and that they should prosper in unity and fraternity, it 
is required that all the members of those churches should be rallied, and 
held together by certain predominant religious ideas ; and how can this be 
done unless each member sometimes draws his opinions from the common 
source, and contents himself to accept certain matters of belief already 
formed ? If a man were forced to demonstrate for himself all the truths of 
■which he makes daily use, his task would never end. He would exhaust his 
strength in preparatory demonstrations, without ever advancing beyond 
them. Hence it is absolutely necessary that a large body of Christians all 
worshipping together should have a creed, for a church without a creed is a 
church without a belief, and a church without a belief is a church without a 
religion. If a church have not a uniform, and specific belief, it is not easy 
to see how they can maintain unity among themselves. If there were no 
denomination there would be no need of a uniform system of belief, to which 
all should be required to conform. With the Bible in his hand, each Chris- 
tian would have all that was necessary for his guidance and edification. But 
he is not alone. He is united with others into an organic church, and they 
form one body in Christy and all who compose it become, mefunhers one of 
another— one not only in name, theoretically united, but one commanded to 
Speak the same thing, and to Stand fast in one spirit, with one mind. Can 
Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Catholics, all worship 
and preach and commune together to the edification of the spirit, and each 
retain the doctrine appropriate to his denomination ? Rather would not the 
House of God, where such worship was carried on, be worse than a miser- 
able Babel ? AVould it not be worse than mockery to sit together at the 
same communion table ? How could any church preserve itself from dis- 
cord and heresy, when it is composed of such heterogeneous materials? 
Paul said of such in his day, that they did preach another gospel, and 
charged those to whom he wrote to hold them as accursed, and denounced 
their teachings as damnable, the advocates of which they were admonished 
not to receive into their houses, or to bid them God speed. 

The adoption of a uniform system of belief does not militate against the 
freedom of religious opinion. Because when an honest man changes his 
mind, as he has a right to do, on the subject of religion, he will always hold 
himself in readiness to change his church afiiliations, and go where the 
promulgations of his sentiments will not produce schism and disco.rd. The 



352 A TP.EATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPEIJDENCE ; 

first object, and one of the principal advantages of articles of faith, is to 
furnish to each of these fundamental questions a solution which is at once 
clear, precise and intelligible to the mass of the members of the church, and 
lasting. There may be many things included in the formulas not intrinsi- 
cally true, but it may be affirmed that any articles of faith, which are few 
in number and fundamental in character, imposes a salutary restraint on 
the religious mind, and it must be admitted that, if they are not infallibly 
true, they are at least very helpful in church government and conducive to 
unity in faith and practice, without which every member would accustom 
himself to have only confused and changing notions on the subject of the 
cardinal doctrines of the churches. His opinions would be ill-defended 
and easily abandoned, and indeed could never hope to solve by himself the 
hard problems in theology and thus put himself in unison with the churches. 
His once having covenanted to stand to, and abide by the creed of the 
church, interposes no obstacle in the way of his afterwards deserting that 
denomination, and uniting himself with another, if it be a matter of con- 
science with him. So that no honest man will, by reason of his former 
covenant, labor under any temptation to resist light as it bursts in upon his 
soul, and to remain where he is, and in so doing ought never to be embar- 
rassed by his former steps, but to look at present duty, and to go forward, 
leaving the past and the future with God. All that Baptists have ever 
insisted upon is fidelity to one's church and creed, as long as a member pro- 
fesses to be a Baptist. Let no minister flatter himself that he is to be 
accounted zealous for the truth if he persistently preaches that for doctrine 
to which all the churches cannot subscribe, after it is thoroughly understood, 
and which disturbs the tranquillity of the churches. Far better will it be 
for him to silence himself than to wait for the church to silence him, by the 
exercise of its sovereign authority. They should never become so orthodox 
in their own opinion as that by the preaching of another gospel they thereby 
disturb the churches of Christ. It is true that many instances have been 
afforded of men who were v/illing to incur, not only reproach, but also im- 
prisonment, and even death itself, rather than abandon the truth and preach 
a doctrine which they could not adopt. On the other hand not a few in- 
stances have occurred of unprincipled ministers, after full investigation, giv- 
ing their voluntary assent to an orthodox creed, afterwards disregarding 
their covenant, and pertinaciously opposing the same, and still persist in 
retaining their church relations, with no compunctions of conscience, at the 
same time almost every form of heresy has lurked under their indorsement 
of the church's orthodox creed. Any systems of church government, and 
any forms of belief, are but failures, and cannot possibly answer one princi- 
pal purpose for which they are formed, if they fail to guard the churches 
from the intrusion and teaching of ministers, who, though they are other- 
wise pious and useful, yet, who do not fail to disturb the peace of the 
churches, and never fail to mar the edification of the more correct, and sound 
part of the denomination, who stand always ready to contend for the faith. 
While it behooves the churches to watch over the truth and to guard it 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 353 

from violence, yet it is often noticed that those who profess to "be zealous 
for the truth's sake, their feet are not shod with the preparation of the gospel of 
peace, and are like Diotrephese of a contentious spirit, putting all their self- 
conceited opinions into the creed, thereby swelling it all into foundation, 
with nothing left for superstructure, forgetting that men should in many 
things, non-essential, be left in their own liberty of believing whatsoever 
does not undermine either faith or practice. And it is certain that whatever 
admonition it is necessary to administer to such brethren, it ought to be done 
with much sweetness of temper and modesty, which is better than to do it 
rashly, frequently and furiously, and thereby create more disturbance in 
the churches than the preaching of the error itself was wont to cause. There 
is no place for that which is uncharitable in any creed, and thereby so to 
make it become an article of faith. A malicious person, in his error, be- 
comes heretical, when a good and pious man in the same error may have all 
the rewards of faith, should he take no pains to spread his errors to the dis- 
turbance of the churches. For whatever a common disturber of the denomi- 
national tranquillity believes, if he believes it because it serves his own ends, 
he has an heretical mind, for to serve his own ends his mind is prepared to 
believe a lie. But a pious man that believes, what according to his light is 
deducible from the creed of the church, whether he falls upon the right or 
not in matters non-essential to salvation, is, therefore, acceptable to God, 
and should be to the church if he take no pains to disseminate his belief, to 
the disturbance of the church in which he lives and worships. Let all errors 
be as much and as zealously suppressed as may be, but let it be done by 
such means as are proper instruments of their suppression, that is, by preach- 
ing and disputation and by the religious press, by charity, by exhortation 
and by admonition, so that neither of them breed a disturbance of the de- 
nominational tranquillity. Men should not be hasty in calling every opin- 
ion, which they dislike, by the name of heresy, but should they believe that 
a doctrine, not in harmony with the creed of the church, has been promul- 
gated, let them use the erring person like a brother, and not vex him by 
harsh accusations as though he were no Christian, although he lives a good 
life and believes the creed in all its fundamental and essential doctrines, and 
takes no pains to press his views upon others. 

Hence it is very plain to be seen that articles of faith should be few in 
number and easy to understand. The question arises, which of the two is a 
schismatic, he who makes numerous, unnecessary and inconvenient articles 
of faith, or he who disobeys them, because he cannot, without doing violence 
to his conscience, believe them ? He who is forced to part communion, be- 
cause, without sin, he could not believe every article of faith, or they who 
have made it necessary for him to separate from the church, by requiring 
such conditions, which to no man are necessary. As few errors are damna- 
ble or destructive to church government it is reasonable as few should sub- 
ject one to ecclesiastical discipline. There are few articles of faith in the 
Christian religion, of which the Saviour has said : Se that helieveih not shall 
he damned. Such articles are happily few in number, and are to be regarded 
23 



354 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPKUDEXCE ; 

only as fundamental, and necessary to Christian faith and essential to his 
salvation. Now Baptists have ever contended that in things necessary to 
one's salvation the Scriptures are plain and perfect, and men are obliged, 
under pain of damnation, to seek the true sense of it, and not to wrest it to 
their preconceived fancies. As to matters non-essential, the Scripture stands 
in need of some watchful and unerring eye to guard it, by means of whose 
assured vigilance we may keep it pure and undefiled, but because no new 
article of faith is warrantable, but what the apostles taught, no necessity is 
to be pretended, but what they imposed. No creed ought ever to pretend to 
go into the details of belief, because it is not certain that every such detail 
is right, and that every interpretation is well deduced ; or if it be certain to 
one it may not be so to another; and besides it is more an instrument of 
schism than of peace, it can divide more than it can instruct, and it is plainly 
a falling away from the simplicity of the Christian faith, by which simplicity 
both the learned and the ignorant are the more safe. But when we come to 
have the pure word of God pass through the hands of the curious creed- 
maker, where interest, and fancy, and error, and ignorance, and passion are 
intermingled, nothing can be so certain, though they may fall upon some 
things very true. In the simplicity of the faith of the church the brethren 
can rest, here they can find peace ; that faith which saves the soul,-and is 
the ground and pillar of the truth is simple, easy and intelligible, free from 
temptation and free from intrigues and strained constructions ; it is war- 
ranted by Scripture, composed and delivered by the apostles and entertained 
by all the churches. In these things do all agree, but in nothing else but 
this, and their fountain, the plain words of the Holy Scriptures. 

We are commanded, If it he possible, as much as lieth in us, to live peace- 
ably with all men. But it is not possible to live at peace with some men. 
We should not be at peace with those whose duty it is to know what the 
truth is, and to preach it with fidelity to the church which Commissioned 
them so to do, if they do it not. We must not be at peace with those who, 
through ignorance or wantonness, preach errors, though they be ever so 
small, to the disturbance of the churches. The faith of the gospel would be 
a prey to every heresy, if the laws of the gospel did not make it our duty 
to oppose them to the utmost of our ability and at our peril. And if in the 
discharge of our duty the peace of the church is, for a time, disturbed, the 
sin lies at the door of those who render the conflict necessary. That would 
be a pitiable condition of a church of Christ, equally divided on a point of 
doctrine ; ministers, as well as private members, constantly difiering among 
themselves, each being conscientiously persuaded that the others were wrong 
upon a doctrine, concerning which there can be no compromise, and each 
endeavoring to make proselytes to his own principles and practices. Would 
not such a church rather resemble the builders of Babel, when their speech 
was confounded, than a united family walking together in the fear of the Lord 
and in the consolations of the Holy Spirit, and edifying one another in love. 
Hence, it matters not how non-essential the point of difference is, he who 
would preach it to the disturbance of the churches, subjects himself to the 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 355 

discipline of his church. How much soever we might othfrwise deprecate 
the multiplication of articles of faith in the creed of the churches, the sum- 
mary of truths must of necessity contain articles, not strictly speaking funda- 
mental and necessary to salvation. If they do not, they cannot possibly 
answer one principal purpose for which they were formed — that is, guarding 
the churches from the intrusion of teachers, who, though they may be pious, 
yet could not fail to disturb the peace of the denomination by the preach- 
ing of errors, to which the churches cannot subscribe, and which is calcu- 
lated to break their unity. For it is hard to tell what is necessary and what 
is not, when we come to look at the matter from the standpoint of the good 
of the church, because there are so many false teachers in the world who 
have their own loose way of interpreting the Scriptures, every one of whom 
bring a new word and a new doctrine to light in their preaching. The 
apostles did not only foresee, but foretold that these would be, but did live 
to see and feel the effect of the heresies, and the false doctrines obtruded upon 
the churches. Yet, against all this, they did not try to provide a specific 
remedy by going into detail, but left it to the good sense and reason of those 
to whom they committed the churches, at their death and departure, to throw 
around the gospel all the safeguards necessary to its protection and purity. 
As for these inspired men, they took the instructions of the Master and their 
own teachings as a summary of faith, which was a sufficient declaration of 
all necessary truth, and a complete reproof of all heresies, that should arise 
in their day. This much is certain, that, in our inquiries concerning faith, 
no man's conscience can be pressed with any authority, but by Christ enjoin- 
ing it, and the apostles' declaration of what is necessary, all of which must 
be deducible from their express teachings ; for heretics make disputes and 
disputes make heretics, but faith makes none. 

While every minister is by virtue of his office bound to know the truth, 
and to preach it with fidelity, yet if any church should be supposed to order 
any doctrine to be preached, as necessary to salvation, which the preacher is 
satisfied, in his conscience, was apparently contrary to the gospel, he is 
thereby nevertheless obliged to reject such doctrine, and for so doing, he has 
the authority of the Holy Spirit, who has shared in his divine call to the 
ministry, and entrusted him with his high office. In consequence of which, 
the ministry must be allowed to have the right to put their own construction 
upon the creed of the church, and to judge for themselves of the doctrine 
they preach ; being accountable to the churches for the abuse of their 
authority, as the entrusting them with so much care must also invest them 
with so much authority, as shall be necessary to that purpose. This ad- 
monishes them to take care that in their preaching that nothing be omitted, 
or wanting, which the gospel has made necessary to salvation. Likewise 
that nothing be added, either in faith or practice, as necessary and essential, 
but what the word of God has made so. And in this case although the 
ministry have no power in themselves to bind any doctrine upon the con- 
sciences of the churches, yet as ministers of Christ they are supposed to have 
all the qualifications that fit them for a right judgment in these matters of 



356 

faith, as persons set apart for tlie consideration of these spiritual things, and 
should very properly be consulted on such occasions, and a dutiful regard 
should be paid to their judgment. But in matters of faith they are not to 
lord it over God's heritage, being only shepherds and guides ; so he has no 
power to bind the consciences of men by requiring anything as necessary to 
salvation which the Scriptures have not made so. 

Baptists do not, nor have they ever opposed ecclesiastical creeds, only 
creed-making, and the authoritative imposing of them upon the consciences 
of men, is what they denounce. Not the creed itself, but the manner of 
evolving it, is what they oppose. It is far better to have the creed written 
in the minds, hearts and consciences of men, than to have it recorded upon 
paper. It thereby becomes a part of their very nature and being, as then 
especially does it thereby become their veritable belief, or their creed. In 
the same way that the English constitution is an unwritten instrument, and 
in the same sense that the common law is non scripta, so is the creed of a 
Baptist church unwritten. This is done by carefully ascertaining how the 
churches, and how those whom she suspects of being in error, understand and 
interpret the Bible ; that is by evolving certain doctrinal principles or articles 
of faith from the Scriptures, according to her understanding of them, and 
comparing these articles with the professed belief of those whom she supposes 
to be heretics. Before the church can detect heresies and cast them out of 
her bosom, before she can raise her voice against prevailing errors, she must 
be agreed what is truth, they must have some accredited source to resort to 
in order to know what they have agreed to consider as truth. The Bible, to 
Baptists, is the form of sound words, which they have voluntarily adopted 
and pledged themselves to holdfast to. Confessions of faith are but the in- 
terpretation of the holy record, and the only thing to be found out, is how 
the churches have uniformily construed the Bible, and if there be a difference 
of opinion the only way left is to ascertain the generally received opinion 
which must be taken as true. It is well enough to have this interpretation 
reduced to writing in the form of articles, or confessions of faith, if there be 
any one possessed of sufficient wisdom and spiritual accuraen to do so, for 
the guidance and assistance of the churches ; not that all churches would be 
bound to follow them, but that all churches would, in time, learn to follow 
them in proportion as they might be intrinsically correct and Scriptural- 
And this is the way and the only one why Baptists have a written confession 
of faith. He, or they, who wrote them never designed that they should be- 
come standards of belief, or that they should become so universally adopted 
among Baptist churches, and but for the fact of their orthodoxy, they never 
would have become so universally favored. This was the creed of the church 
long before it was reduced to writing, and in a truer sense would it still be 
the creed of the church, were the writing destroyed. This gradual adop- 
tion of a written creed, by the universal consent of the churches, is but a 
tribute to that truth and candor, which every sister church owes to every 
other church, and to the world around her, so that they may know what em- 
phasis they put upon a particular doctrine of the Bible. For it is not 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 357 

always sufficient to say that one believes the Bible, as if all who profess to 
receive the Bible were standing upon equally solid and safe ground. Has not 
the experience of all convinced them that it is impossible to bring an heretic 
to punishment as long as he is permitted to intrench himself behind a mere 
general profession of a belief in the Bible. This is nothing more than the 
bitterest enemies of the truth proclaim busily and even clamorously every 
day, when charged with infidelity to that truth. That heretics should oppose 
creeds, as standards of belief, is just as natural as that a criminal, arraigned 
before a civil tribunal, should equally dislike the law, its judges and its 
punishments. 

Baptists at no period in the history of the world have ever bowed to the 
authority of human creed-makers without examining, understanding and 
reproducing the reason that actuates them, and whenever they have done 
so the less merit do they see in these man-made instruments. As for Bap- 
tists, they have not learned the divine art of enacting laws for God, which 
requires a higher knowledge than they, with all their wisdom, have ever 
attained. The best they can do is to try and properly interpret ,those 
already made by divine authority. As a truth-loving people they can- 
not be charged with a tame and sluggish acquiescence in the conclu- 
sions of him who sits down and, with premeditated deliberation, undertakes 
to say what their followers shall in advance believe. The error in the 
modern creed-maker consists in the attempt to formulate articles of faith — 
that which falls but little below the Scriptures themselves— and in reasoning 
deductively from propositions, whose truth and verity had not been estab- 
lished by proper preliminary processes. Those who believe in them receive 
them as the sum total of a perfect ecclesiastical system, not as the provisional 
researches of a progressive development, but as a metal statue cast in a 
mould of iron. When ready finished they receive them as if they were the 
responses of an oracle ; while Baptists receive their creed as being something 
handed down from the old and experienced to the young and inexperienced, 
upon the principle that an old man is wiser and more experienced than the 
young, and, therefore, more and the better able to judge than a young man ; 
so a remote generation being nearer the apostolic age was in a condition 
better to know the truth than the existing one, thereby furnishing the pres- 
ent generation with a most ample stock of experience and observation. 
Each successive generation enjoys the benefit of the experience and knowl- 
edge of its predecessors, together with its own, in knowing and perfecting a 
true creed for the churches, and if gospel truth be, like other things around 
us, in a progressive state, the faith and purity of the most recent generation 
ought to be the maturest and best, as we are admonished to grow in grace. 
Hence a true church creed is the daughter of time rather than that of eccle- 
siastical authority, made beforehand and imposed by man. In a spiritually 
progressive church orthodox opinions gradually, in the long run, prevail over 
errors and heresies ; for if they were not thus predominant, under the benign 
influence of the Holy Spirit, Baptist churches would cease to be progressive 
and have no way of preserving the truth. With respect to a ready-made 



358 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

and written creed the fact of its having been formally reduced to writing, as 
such, raises no presumption in its favor ; it does not thereby prove that it is 
suited to the present wants of the churches. But a Baptist church creed 
stands upon a different footing. Being the unwritten law of the churches 
as to doctrine, either with few or no intervals or suspensions, it has been tried 
by a long experience, and has by a gradual and intelligent, though an 
almost insensible process, been adapted to the interests, habits and spiritual 
feelings of the churches. Their good parts have thus been developed ; their 
bad parts eliminated or counteracted ; usage and custom have reconciled 
people to their defects, if any, and with which the denomination have be- 
come familiar. On the other hand, a written creed is something lying be- 
yond the range of our experience, and may be handed down, through a series 
of generations, with implicit faith, but without undergoing any process of 
examination or verification, and consequently without acquiring any confir- 
mation of its truth. 

It follows, therefore, from these considerations that there is in Baptist 
church jurisprudence no one body of persons who are competent judges of 
doctrine, and who are qualified to guide the churches in all sorts of opinions, 
and no high court of appeals to say what men shall believe and practice save 
the churches themselves ; that there is no intellectual or spiritual aristocracy, 
separate from the rest of the churches whose authority in these sacred matters 
predominates over them indiscriminately. Now in the sciences, as it is a secular 
affair and relates not to the consciences of men, they have their own pecu- 
liar set of competent judges, and he who is not skilled therein ought to know 
the bounds of his information, and not venture to pronounce an authorita- 
tive and independent opinion on questions lying out of his proper province. 
Upon questions of this sort a man ought to defer to the opinions of others, 
who may be wholly unacquainted with his own subject, and who, and with 
respect to that subject, ought to receive his teachings from others ; but in mat- 
ters of faith and doctrine, no man can stand between him and Christ, whom 
he must take in, through faith, and that by his own faith, and not that .of 
another. As the finding of an article of faith in a written creed does not 
afford presumptive evidence of its truth, unless it be first tried before adop- 
tion, and universally agreed to, by all Baptists, without any dissent of opin- 
ion, before its incorporation into the creed. New-fangled, present and preva- 
lent opinions, may have sprung from the most impure sources. Mere unau- 
thorized opinions, imperfect and unverified theories, hasty and illogical 
generalizations from single facts in a lump thrown together, to round out a 
theory, and to establish a methodical system of doctrine and church govern- 
ment, uncorrected by any analytical process, with no resemblance to the 
apostolical formulas, are often the originating cause of wide-spread opinions, 
which said opinions are embodied in the creed of the church. These errors 
thus become deeply rooted in the popular conviction of the denomination, 
and once they become crystallized into a creed, they become fixed and stable, 
and descend from generation to generation. When we come to examine 
these modern man-made creeds we find that many of the false and unfounded 



OR, THE COMMOIT LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 359 

errors have been entertained by these denominations without question for 
ages. Not only has this been the case with respect to false religions, but we 
find the same thing with respect to facts in statute law and in the sciences, 
which admitted of being verified by easy and simple experiments, it is found 
afterwards to be hard to break away from these conclusions, and certainly 
they stand in the way of reform and spiritual development. That the exten- 
sive diffusion of any well-rounded belief, and its reception among the people, 
does not prove that all those who adhere to it have examined the creed upon 
its merits, and have founded their conclusions upon an independent investi- 
gation of the evidence of others. An opinion, on the behalf of a church, may 
be held by the whole denomination, but they may all have been misled by 
some erroneous authority ; they all may have mechanically followed the same 
blind guide, some company or order of priests, who presume to say what 
others shall believe. Hence Baptists, as a denomination, can be considered 
in the light of a body of witnesses to the truth and verity of their articles of 
faith, and this concurrence of witnesses is of weight in the establishment of 
a uniform belief. This unanimous concurrence of, and uniformity in, belief 
is likewise conscientious and sincere, and they thus obtain that guarantee of 
truth which is afforded by sincerity and candor. 

Accordingly the judgment of Baptists is more correct on questions of 
morality and individual behavior, conduct and practice, than on questions 
of theory and speculative abstract creeds. Their opinions are entitled to 
greater weight with respect to existing errors, than with respect to their 
remedies — ^with respect to what the belief of the church is, than what it ought 
to be. They can, by their own feelings and individual observation, discover 
the existence of errors and heresies; but what are the proper remedies for 
these evils, or how they may be remedied by the ecclesiastical power of the 
governmental machinery of the church, they are in general less able to form 
a correct opinion. Whereas in other systems where the rulers are once 
satisfied that the existence of what they term an error is admitted, they sit 
down and formulate a new article of faith to denounce the error, while 
Baptists never defer to the authority of any man, or set of men, with respect 
to the choice of an immediate remedy, but wait until time and denomina- 
tional public opinion uproots the heresy, and casts it away. This denomina- 
tional popular opinion is a wonderful thing, but is more to be relied on in 
reference to complaints against, and attacks upon, old doctrines and land- 
marks, than against new ones sought to be set up by "oracles not well 
inspired." With respect to the former. Baptists judge, in general, from 
experience and observed facts ; against the latter they are prejudiced by a 
few interested or passionate leaders and agitators, before the new has been 
established by custom and usage in such a manner as to be fairly judged by 
its results, and a popular clamor is thus excited against new doctrines and 
innovations. The whole Baptist denomination on guard and on the lookout 
for heresies can observe better than a privileged class of men " in orders " 
can, for every Baptist, how humble soever he may be, is a high-priest before 
the altar, and is accountable to God alone, and along with others, go to 



860 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

make up the denomination. So far as faith is concerned there may be a 
defect of knowledge in the members of a church, considered as separate 
individuals, but though each person's share of knowledge and good sense is 
small, yet, where these separate amounts, being supplied by their aggregate 
number, are added together, it makes a large quantity, and in this manner 
the faith and wisdom of the whole denomination, in the aggregate, exceed 
that of the so-called wise few. So, in our Baptist churches, in judging of 
doctrine and generating the common law of the churches, the unskilled 
many may be, and is, equal or superior to the skilled few; for different 
persons will judge of different phases of doctrine, and the judgments of the 
many, when put together, will exhaust the entire subject and thus form a 
consensus of denominational public opinion which elevates itself to the 
dignity of a standard of belief upon which it is safe to act. While they 
have never ^vritten and authoritatively promulgated by the churches, as an 
ecclesiastical instrument, their importance has been recognized, as represent- 
ing and concentrating the interpretation, and the experience of the whole 
denomination, and even of all the generations since the days and times of 
the apostles ; as being the brief and pointed epitome and expression of the 
inferences and deductions which the popular denominational observation 
and sagacity have collected from the long life of the churches themselves. 

The only form in which the consensus of denominational opinion; voice 
and sentiment, with reference to doctrine, embodies itself, is in articles of 
faith or doctrinal axims, whose authority is, derived from their popular recep- 
tion. I do not know that Baptists agree as to who wrote and formulated 
our present articles of faith, but they certainly embody the acumen of one 
learned man, whoever he may be, and the wisdom and experience of the 
whole denomination upon the cardinal questions of doctrine. Every Baptist 
church possesses its collection of articles of faith, some written and others 
unwritten, many of which are with the necessary changes of expression and 
form common to all, and have a general currency, by what lawyers would 
call a sort of jus gentium. Among Baptists, articles of faith being doctrinal 
maxims, in the nature, either of observation or precept, are accredited by 
the tacit verification which they have undergone in their transmission from 
one individual and one generation to another. And hence they may be con- 
sidered the true basis of all ecclesiastical union. Without this uniformity 
of doctrine. Baptist churches, far from being otherwise an intercourse of 
brotherly love, and the ground and pillar of the truth, would be no longer 
anything but a vast scene of chaos and confusion. If their truth or 
soundness had not been recognized by those who use them and handed them 
on, they Avould soon have gone into disuse or oblivion. In general, articles 
of faith embrace only those founded upon the experiment or experience of 
the denomination ; that is to say, being generalizations from practical experi- 
ence, they are only true within certain limits, and subject to certain condi- 
tions, and hence they are not to be implicitly received as infallible, as we 
receive the inspired word. Before, therefore, a popular article of faith can 
be safely used for doctrinal purposes as evidence of a general truth, it must, 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 361 

for a long space of time, undergo a process of analysis and comparison with 
the divine text, from which it is supposed to be derived. It must be limited 
according to the spiritual tendencies which it involves and the purposes for 
which it is apphcable. In this manner articles of faith, which are appar- 
ently contradictory, may be reconciled, and the partial truth which they 
contain will be extracted, retained and rendered profitable. Hence, these 
observations of past experience, these concise expressions of theological 
truth, cannot be used and substituted for the Scriptures ; nor can they take 
their place in a system of accurate Scriptural knowledge, without under- 
going a process of correction from time to time, so as to conform to the truth 
as it is in the Scriptures. Regarded as a standard of truth, articles of faith, 
whether right or wrong, must, nevertheless, always be important and neces- 
sary, since there are many things in which the consensus of opinion necessa- 
rily exercises a decisive influence in church government. By internal con- 
cord a small denomination may become powerful, while by internal discord, 
a large one is sure to be rendered weak. Although the theory of the social 
compact, in civil governments, is visionary and groundless, yet Baptist 
church government rests largely, as to doctrine, on a tacit agreement for a 
common end. It exists by a voluntary obedience of the majority of the 
people belonging to the churches, and armed with that support, they enforce 
their laws as to doctrine against each individual who successively violates it. 
Matters of faith being a subject on which each Baptist is required to act 
for himself, he cannot procure what he wants by exchange from others, and 
receive his articles of faith ready-made, as a suit of clothes from a tailor. 
Then it is important that they go to the fountain head — the Scriptures — to 
know of the doctrine, in order that they may be able to guide their own 
judgment by a trustworthy authority. This is certainly the case with most 
of the opinions by which they steer their course both in private and public 
life. In ail cases where men are called upon to act, or to decide, he ought 
to have such a store of those opinions which are useful to be put in practice 
as will enable him to direct his own course with intelligence and safety. In 
all matters relating to his soul's salvation he ought not to trust wholly to 
others to dish out ready-made opinions as to doctrine, but be able to dive 
down into the very bowels of the word of God for himself to learn what the 
Lord requires of him lest in the last day he may be charged with having 
followed the blind. When this is the case the evidence of the truth in the 
light of experience, the Scriptures would be more uniformly consulted ; 
reason would be more in the ascendant, and intelligent discussion of all sorts 
would at once be more free, more tolerant, and more fruitful of results. As 
a consequence of refusing to drink in the belief of others, upon these questions 
of hfe and death, religious opinions would be more enlightened, more con- 
scientious, and more wary, and less prone to deception and the ruin of the 
soul. Christian men and women would be less puerile and more manly. To 
say the least, whatever deference we should show to our religious guides, to 
whose authority we would bow, they ought to be regarded rather as advisers 
and counsellors, than as dictators and masters. A too ready resort to the 



362 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

opinions of others and to articles of faith, handed down from a former age 
and received among Baptists, may check the freedom of investigation, per- 
petuate error, prevent originality of thought, and the discovery of new lights 
and new truths, and maintain Baptist church jurisprudence in a stationary 
and unimproved state. Let it be understood by every young convert joining 
a Baptist church that he owes to his spiritual guides, and pastors, and to 
articles of faith, only a temporary belief, and a temporary suspension of their 
own judgment, until he be fully instructed by, and for himself, and not an 
absolute resignation, or perpetual captivity. Whatever deference is justly 
due to articles of faith, and spiritual guides, they are not to be considered as 
infallible — as high courts of theological wisdom from which there is no appeal. 
Humble Baptists, who came after the great discoverers of truth, and those 
who have evolved and perfected Baptist church jurisprudence-, may, though 
endowed with inferior intellectual gifts, re-tread the same ground, may toil 
along the same lines, they are called upon by usage to verify what is correct 
and true, and by disuse to reject what is doubtful or heretical. They may 
remove subordinate defects, and complete parts which have been left imper- 
fect in systems which they could not have conceived. Although they could 
not have designed the plan of Baptist church government, or laid out the 
foundations, it is their great privilege to assist in bringing the edifice to com- 
pletion. The generation which makes plain a new truth had no better means 
of judgment on the subject than ourselves ; on the other hand, we have not 
only their knowledge, but the experience of subsequent years and of our own 
time to guide us. 

Thus we see very plainly how it is possible, through a long course of time, 
to unify one great denomination upon the cardinal doctrines of the Bible and 
to keep them pure ; but how to unify and make one the whole Christian 
world is an unsolved problem, but, nevertheless, is one that deserves the ma- 
turest judgment of our wisest theologians. Upon this subject the world has 
no experience derived either from practice or observation to guide them. 
Thus we know that the various sects and creeds into which the world is 
divided continue to exist side by side with one another, and show no ten- 
dency to coalesce into a common belief, or to recognize a common authority 
in religious truth. These different sects continue to exist and have run on 
for centuries in parallel lines, without converging to a common central focus 
of agreement. In other matters of opinions, although they spring from dif- 
ferent sources, and follow for a time in distinct courses, at last flow together 
into one main stream ; whereas the distinctive tenets of the religious w^orld 
not only spring from different sources, but continue to run in widely 
different channels. Will this always continue thus ? Nay, verily, for the 
Lord, the great founder of the churches, prayed that his people might be one 
— one in doctrine and in manners. It shows a want of faith in the efficacy 
of the prayer of our Saviour to say that those whom he has redeemed will 
never get together upon a common basis of the truth. Suffice it to say that 
Baptists have demonstrated to the world in their system of church govern- 
ment that religious truth and doctrine, when embodied in a free and inde- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 363 

pendent churcli, unshackled by ecclesiastical legislation and priestly domina- 
tion, follow a certain law of progression and progressive development, that 
tends to unify and does make one those who adhere to it. That under this 
divine system, while error is gradually diminished, truth is established by a 
continually enlarging consensus, like the successive circles made upon the 
surface of the ocean by the dropping in of a pebble. With all these shackles 
of ecclesiasticism which bind down the people of the world, the truth can but 
oscillate backwards and forwards, but does not tend, by a joint action, to a 
common center. All this diversity of religious belief exists not only in spite 
of the attempts which have been made to produce a oneness of will, faith and 
practice in doctrine, but mainly in consequence of them. Both churches 
and governments have attempted to extinguish errors and heresies by disci- 
pline and even persecutions, and, on the other hand, to favor what they con- 
ceived to be the truth by linking church and state together, the better to fos- 
ter and endow the truth ; and as they have formulated and adopted different 
creeds, that which was considered religious error by one was considered reli- 
gious truth by the other. They forget the fact there is but one faith, one 
Lord, and one baptism, and that truth comes as a matter of necessity, born not of 
the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God, and has continued ever since 
the same, unchanged and unchangeable, in one continuous undying body, 
and that men cannot be welded together in religious matters by ecclesiastical 
bonds and legislative enactments, but by love. 

Whatever views we may have upon the subject of Christian unity and 
how much soever we may be inclined to speculate upon the subject we are 
constrained to believe that it can never be accomplished at least organically 
except upon the principles of orthodoxy. Now orthodoxy is a relative 
term, as we have seen heretofore. But as all sects admit that orthodoxy is 
the right belief, and that right belief is that one truly taught in the Scrip- 
tures, then the Scripture is the only true basis upon which this union can be 
effected. Since Holy Scripture is the only repository of divine truth and 
the great rule of faith to which all sects of Christians do profess to appeal 
for proof of their several opinions, then let all men believe the Scripture and 
that only, and endeavor to believe it in the true sense, and require no more 
of others, and they shall find this not only a better, but the only means to 
suppress heresy and restore that unity which was the glory of the. primitive 
churches set up by the apostles. For he who cuts himself loose from man- 
made creeds and humanly devised systems and believes the Scripture sin- 
cerely, and endeavors to believe it in the true sense cannot possibly be an 
heretic. Let the Christian world set aside and ignore priest- craft and 
priestly domination over the churches by which the apostolic plan of church 
government has been overthrown and subverted, then all churches and all 
Christians will begin to assimilate towards one another and begin to see the 
truth alike. And if no more than this were required of any man to make 
him capable of Christian union and ecclesiastical communion, then all men, 
though they were somewhat different in opinion in matters not essentially 
fundamental, notwithstanding any such difference, must be of necessity one 



364 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

in love and one in communion. This can never be done by building up a 
huge ecclesiastical hierarchy, but by cutting the bonds of a false and forced 
union which the more it has been tested and tried the wider have the 
sects been drifting asunder. For ecclesiastical history teaches us that this 
attempted union born of force and bred of compulsion, instead of bringing 
all Christians together in unity and fellowship, has made the way to heaven 
narrower, the yoke of Christ heavier, the differences of faith greater and the 
conditions of ecclesiastical communion harder and stricter than they were 
made at the beginning by Christ and his apostles. If ever the union of all 
Christians is effected it must be done upon the basis of the truth, and must 
grow out of that Christian charity which was made manifest in the person 
and work of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ establishing itself in the 
hearts of his followers. The external communication of thought and will 
must be from the inner unity of the Spirit. As it is now the intercourse of 
all Christian communities can never be more, and ought never to be less, 
than a faithful and wise expression of brotherly love and fellowship of soul. 
As every act, in Baptist church polity, between churches, being nothing 
more than to express brotherly love, is a valid communion of churches, so no 
act between all churches which is not intended and adapted to express 
brotherly love can be the basis of Christian unity and fellowship. To speak 
of Christian unity otherwise than as a means of manifesting love and fellow- 
ship for each other is to utter a manifest absurdity. To enter into any act 
of so-called organic unity without being moved thereto by love of the truth 
is to enter upon an unchristian act ; such an unity is likely to lead to an out- 
rage upon true church polity, and a disgrace of the Christian name. 

Thus we have in this place endeavored to lay down a few of the maxims 
concerning ecclesiastical creeds in the short space allotted to the subject, but 
we do not flatter ourselves that we have exhausted the subject, or that all 
the rules here laid dow^n are infallible. The differences of opinion in the 
world concerning faith are wide and divergent, and even among Baptist dif- 
ferent shades of belief must be allowed. All efforts to force and enforce a 
perfect unity of faith is but a part of the fire that is attempted to be 
quenched, so far is it from extinguishing any part of the flames. Nearly all 
churches of the different denominations look to ecclesiastical creeds as a 
means of union. But supposing all the world has agreed to a creed upon 
which all might stand, yet the different interpretations of it would be so- full 
of variety, this also would be a cause for divisions. It must, therefore, be 
again insisted that so long as men have such a variety of faiths, such differ- 
ent ecclesiastical constitutions, education, hopes, interests, weaknesses and 
degrees of light, it is impossible for all to be of one mind. And, therefore, 
although variety of opinions is impossible to be cured under a variety of 
creeds made by men of different minds, yet this bane of the Christian religion 
might possibly be cured, not by attempting to unite their beliefs, for that is 
to be disposed of, but by destroying that which has caused all these mis- 
chiefs and divisions — that is to say, destroy all the men-made creeds in the 
world and then to plant ourselves upon the immutable word of God and let 
it alone be our man of counsel. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 365 



CHAPTER XIII. 

OF THE NATURE OF ECCLESIASTICAL HERESY, AND HOW IT SHOULD BE 
TREATED IN CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 

BAPTISTS have always considered that the protection of the churches 
against heresy is within the province of ecclesiastical government, and 
should be within the first sanctions of disciplinary laws. The preservation of 
the churches from the great sin of heresy becomes the primary object and 
care of the whole denomination. And thus it is that the reciprocal duties of 
protection and allegiance form the foundation and support of all ecclesiasti- 
cal government. The general welfare, peace and concord of the denomina- 
tion is blended in the security of the churches from this withering curse. 
Nor can Baptist churches fall a sacrifice to heresy, sown broadcast among 
them, without involving the whole denomination. Hence it follows that 
heresy, which in every instance strikes ultimately at the well-being of true 
church government, is the worst offence that can be committed by one pro- 
fessing to be a Baptist ; because it is of all offences the most audacious in its 
nature, and most extensively pernicious in its consequences, being a most 
fatal and entire renunciation of faith, duty and allegiance to the churches of 
our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. While uniformity iu opinions cannot 
be the result of force, or discipline, nor general orthodoxy be the creature of 
mandatory rules, yet it falls within the duty and prerogative of every church 
to preserve itself from error and destruction, and the end certainly justifies 
the means. 

If the Saviour's prediction has been verified, of which there can be no 
doubt, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church, we must 
conclude that there has always been a never-interrupted succession of men 
from the apostles' time, believing and professing the true faith of the gosj^el, 
and practicing the true polity of the apostolic churches. Hence we con- 
clude that there has been, by divine providence, founded and preserved in 
the world, churches which have held all things precisely and indispensably 
necessary to salvation, and nothing destructive of it. It is equally true, as 
Paul says, there have been those who changed the tru*h of God into a lie. No 
organic body of believers can claim to be the true church of Christ that can- 
not thus produce a perpetual succession of professors, being of a oneness of 
will, faith and practice, which in all essential and fundamental points of be- 
lief, have agreed one w^ith another, and disagreeing in nothing fundamental. 
It is certain that a church remaining a true church cannot fall into funda- 
mental errors, because when it does so it is no longer a church, its candle- 
stick, or church state, being thereby removed. However, the want of a sue- 



Z66 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

cession of ministers or people holding always the same doctrine, is not always 
the surest sign of orthodoxy, but the want of truth, and holding of error, can 
make or prove any man or church heretical ; for, in the very nature of 
things, it may be impossible to prove satisfactorily such a succession of be- 
lievers. It is natural for the mind and soul of man to long for and feast 
upon the truth, as much so as it is for the appetite to relish wholesome food. 
On the other hand, heresy is as distasteful to the soul as bitter food is nau- 
seating to the stomach. It is the very essence of every true church to be the 
maintainor and teacher of all necessary truth, and certainly no organic body 
of men can no more be a church without the truth, than anything can be a 
man and have no life in him. 

Heresy bears the same relation to the religion and polity of the churches 
that treason does to the sovereign power of a nation. In national govern- 
ments treason has always been considered the highest and most atrocious 
crime of which a citizen can be guilty. It is the offence of attempting to 
overthrow the government of the nation to which the offender owes alle- 
giance, and betraying it into the hands of a foreign power. Hence it follows 
that whosoever does not adhere to the free and independent form of church 
government, as set up and practiced by the apostles, is no less a heretic than 
if he should deny a point resting and sounding in belief and faith alone, for 
God has methods as well as principles. A church that should attempt to 
undermine, subvert and overthrow the apostolic form of church government, 
would meet with as summary condemnation at the hands of Baptists as if 
they were to deny some point of faith considered essential to the Christian 
religion. For the church is the ground and pillar of the truth, and if the 
foundation be destroyed there is nothing upon which the truth can rest and 
nothing to support the superstructure, which is nothing less than the truth 
of God. Men living under the same form of government may differ about 
the proper construction to be placed upon the organic law under which they 
live, and yet be loyal citizens, so long as they do not unlawfully attempt to 
change the framework of the government — to put a construction upon the 
law which subverts the government itself. There is as much in the church 
of Christ that relates to practice and to polity, as to doctrine, so much so 
that Baptists make the due administration of the government to be as neces- 
sary and essential to constitute a true church as matters of belief ; as the 
chiefest part of Christian perfection consists more in action than in barren 
speculation, in doing than knowing 

Heresy is defined to be an ecclesiastical offence, committed by a Baptist, 
consisting in holding of a false opinion repugnant to, and subversive of. Bap- 
tist church government, concerning some point of doctrine clearly revealed 
in the Scriptures, and absolutely essential to one's salvation, or else of most 
high importance to the Christian religion and polity of the churches, which 
is contrary to the recognized standards of belief in the denomination, the 
promulgation of which disturbs the peace and harmony of the churches. It 
is not an easy thing to lay down definite rules by which to determine whether 
a doctrine taught be a heresy or not. One thing is evident, we cannot single 



367 

out any point of doctrine, so great or small, that the denial thereof will make 
a man an heretic if it be not found in the Scriptures, and sufficiently pro- 
mulgated as a divine truth. In its broadest sense heresy is a voluntary error 
against that which God has revealed as truth. It does not matter whether 
the error concerns points, in themselves, great or small, fundamental or not 
fundamental. Any and all truth, although, ever so small, must be believed 
and taken in by faith, as soon as we know that it is a part of divine reve- 
lation. 

In the treatment of offences against the laws of the land, crimes have been 
divided into two kinds, to wit, felonies and misdemeanors ; felonies being 
of the gravest and most heinous kind, for the commission of which the law 
visits the severest penalties ; while misdemeanors are those of a less degree of 
guilt, and for which a milder punishment is meted out. Following this 
analogy ecclesiastical offences may be very properly divided into heresies and 
errors ; heresies being those graver crimes against the peace and dignity of 
the churches, which strike at the eternal life of the believer, and at the very 
existence of the churches of Christ ; while errors are those sins against the 
true faith of the gospel which tend to disturb and to divide the unity of the 
churches. Baptists have doctrines fundamental to Christian faith and church 
government, to destroy either is to destroy the church itself. They relate to 
religion and to church pohty. Those that relate to rehgion are such as are 
essential to salvation, grounded on the direction of the Holy Spirit. Those 
relating to polity are such as are repugnant to, and subversive of Baptist 
church government, and to that peace and unity which is the rightful heri- 
tage of the same. 

It is very evident that in the primitive times of the churches, heresies were 
most prolific. In those early times those governments, wherein Christianity 
first took root, were full of philosophers holding vain theories concerning both 
church polity and religion, many of whom were converted to the faith of the 
gospel, some really and others feignedly. Doubtless many of those early 
pastors of the primitive churches were chosen from among these philosophers, 
because they were esteemed learned in disputation and oratory, and thereby 
the better able to defend and propagate the gospel. Some of these pastors 
doubtless still retained many of the false doctrines which they had taken up 
by the authority of their former masters, whom they still held in reverence, 
and each in his interpretation of the Scriptures drew them to his own heresy, 
and with a bias to their former philosophy. As to church polity, they were 
not sufficiently skilled in it to know the utility of guarded opinions in keeping 
pure their form of church government. And thus at first entered heresy into 
the churches. But heresy exists in the world, and has always existed, not- 
withstanding the human mind is made for the truth. 

While aU orthodox Baptists believe that the Bible is true in its verbal 
and formal statement, yet they do not hold this reverential opinion of their 
articles of faith. And when it is asserted that articles of faith, widely held 
and long retained, whether written or unwritten, have Scriptural truth in 
them, we mean only substantial truth. Without substantial truth there 



368 A TREATISE UPOiT BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

would be notliing in tliem to feed the mind upon, and thej would not be 
retained ; and if they were not more or less erroneous in form and statement, 
it would simply imply infallibility on the part of those who gave them form, 
which nothing has save the Bible itself. The Bible from which the creed of 
the church is supposed to be taken is infallible and free from error, but there 
is a possibility that articles of faith may not contain the very essence of the 
truth. Articles of faith being the formulas of the church as to doctrine, it 
ought to be sufficient if a man in his teaching cling to the substance, knowing 
that the vital truth lies there. It is different when we come to consider the 
Bible, for we are bound to teach that the essence of the truth not only lies in 
that holy text, but likewise in its verbal statement, and therefore, we are 
bound to cling to the minutest syllable as an infallible guide in life and doc- 
trine—the Bible itself being the truth, and articles of faith are to be con- 
sidered as the truth stated, which being held by all Baptists everywhere, and 
at all times, are held as standards and must be substantially true. 

Some doctrines are so necessary to the salvation of man, and are such that 
their rectitude is so perfect, their holiness so entire, their usefulness so uni- 
versal, that a church of Christ cannot subsist, nor a man be a Christian, 
without an unqualified belief in them. They are such which no man can 
alter, and which no man can ignore, and no minister can refuse to preach. 
If he does, he undermines the very foundations upon which rests the churches 
of Christ. Happily for Christianity these fundamental articles of faith 
necessary to salvation are few in number, and easily understood. If we ob- 
serve these necessary symbols of belief in the Scriptures, we shall find them 
very short. Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand ; lord, I be- 
lieve that thou art the Christ, the Son of God ; Thou art Christ, the Son of the 
living God; We believe, and are sure that thou art Christ, the Son of the liv- 
ing God ; This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent ; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth 
the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from 
the dead, thou shalt be saved. The substance of all of which is : Repentance 
towards God, and faith in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, coupled with a 
good and pious life as evidence of the faith professed. 

These are some of the more pronounced doctrines necessary and just in 
themselves, mutually believed by all churches, and which all may consecrate 
and enforce by their manners and customs. There are other doctrines of a 
more indifferent nature, respecting which the churches are equally agreed 
upon, especially those relating to ecclesiastical polity. We call them neces- 
sary doctrines because the churches are absolutely bound to observe them. 
They are no less binding upon individuals as upon churches, and all arc 
alike answerable to God for any disbelief in them, under whatever relation 
they act. 

Orthodoxy consists in the true doctrines concerning the Deity, and the 
things of another life, and in the worship appointed to the honor and glory 
of Christ our Saviour. So far as it is seated in the heart, it is an affair of 
the conscience, in which every one ought to be directed by his own enlight- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 369 

ened understanding ; but so far as it is external it is an affair of tlie cliurclies. 
Man is essentially and necessarily free to make use of his own choice in mat- 
ters of faith and religion. Plis belief is not to be commanded. It must 
then be concluded that liberty of conscience is a natural and inviolable 
right. But he should take care not to extend this liberty beyond its just 
bounds. In ecclesiastical affairs, a believer having once entered a church, 
has only a right to be free from compulsion, but not by any means claim 
that of openly doing and saying what he pleases, without regard to the con- 
sequences it may produce on the churches. 

Seeing that a church has been defined to be a body of baptized believers, 
having a oneness of will, faith and practice, it ought to exhibit to God but 
one public doctrine, -svhich the churches have, when it authorizes it, and 
nothing else to be taught by its authorized ministers in a public way. And 
that is a public doctrine, the preaching of which is uniform. For those doc- 
trines that are taught differently by different ministers, cannot be said to be 
a uniform doctrine. And, therefore, when many sorts of doctrines, both of 
which may, and one must be false, are allowed, proceeding from the different 
opinions of men, it cannot be said that there is any uniform doctrine, nor 
that the churches have any standard of doctrine at all. And because the 
Scripture from whence all doctrine is drawn has its interpretations by long 
custom of the churches, that doctrine is to be taken as standard, public and 
authoritative which the churches shall erect, and that alone taught and used 
for such by the public ministers of religion. The whole denomination is a 
party to this uniform interpretation, and, therefore, all the churches are 
bound by the decision. In the uniform interpretation of the Scriptures, as to 
doctrine, there is no contrariety of beliefs, or belief in contradictories, for both 
parts of a contradiction cannot possibly be true. 

There is but one doctrine in God's word, and every church then was, and 
now is, bound to use its utmost endeavor to discern the true from the false. 
And every convert entering a Baptist church ought to know and consider 
that in this system of church government the church is Christ's representa- 
tive on earth, and has next to him the authority of ruling his people and 
should observe for a rule that doctrine, which that church, in the name of 
Christ, has commanded to be taught ; and, therefore, to examine and try the 
truth of those doctrines which pretended false teachers shall at any time ad- 
vance, and if they find it contrary to that standard established by the cus- 
tomary law of the churches, to do as they did to those that came to Moses, 
and complained that there were some who prophesied in the camp, whose 
authority to do so they doubted, and leave to the church, as they did to 
Moses, to uphold or silence them ; and if the church that gave them au- 
thority to preach and teach, should silence them, then no more to recognize 
them, or if the church should uphold them, then obey them as ministers, 
whom God has given a part of His Spirit, calling them into the ministry. 
For when we are not willing to take the standards erected by the churches of 
Christ, we must take our private opinions for the doctrine w^e mean to be 
governed by, otherwise we must be led about by every wind of doctrine that 
24 



370 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUIIISPRUDE2TCE ; 

can bewitcli us into treason against primitive cliurcli government, and into 
rebellion against Christ, and by this means reduce everything sacred in 
religion to discord and disunion. 

Before any man can enter the Baptist ministry he has to be a member of 
a Baptist church, and the church intending to clothe him with ministerial 
functions customarily calls a presbytery of ministers, from sister churches, 
■which has power, not to force and obhge him to preach a certain doctrine' 
but to make known to him the doctrines of the church, and inquire of Lim if 
he be content and willing to preach that doctrine, and in case of refusal, tbe 
church may deny him ordination. To force him to accept opinions Avhich in 
conscience he cannot preach, is against both the law of God and nature, and 
especially would be rej^rehensible in Baptists — that people who have ever 
boasted of liberty of conscience. Hence there is no violence done the con- 
science of him who seeks to enter this ministry. He knowingly and volun- 
tarily accepts the teachings of the church as true, and divests himself of any 
private opinion he may have entertained, contrary to those teachings. He 
subordinates his will to that of Christ, to that of the church and becomes her 
minister to teach her doctrine. Should he violate this solemn covenant by 
teaching a doctrine subversive of either the received religion, or polity of the 
churches, he violates his most solemn trust, and does himself and the churches 
a great injury, It would be impossible to have an orthodox ministry and a 
denomination, unless there were some common ground on which all ministers 
and all churches could agree, and so far as there is a common belief, just so 
far they have a creed or covenant. If Baptists were to ignore tliis standard 
of doctrine, and allow it to mean one thing to one man, and something else to 
another, having authority to preach, soon we would be at large in the bound- 
less field of speculation and heresy, and the landmarks of Baptist church 
government would soon be removed, and the churches plunged into chaos 
and confusion. 

Religion is no further an affair of the church than as it is exterior, and 
publicly professed, provided, he who professes it shows liimself to be a regen- 
erate man ; religion of the heart can only depend on the conscience. The 
church has no right to discipline regenerate persons who are otherwise pious 
for their private opinions, when those persons either take no pains to divulge 
them, nor to obtain followers. For really men are not heretics because they 
oppose divers truths supposed to be embraced in the articles of faith of the 
church, but only such a truth as is an essential part of the gospel of Christ. 
But for the sake of the peace and order of the churches many errors, though 
they be not damnable or fundamental, are to be included in the category of 
heresies to be suppressed by the churches. It is the diversity of opinions 
contrary to the standards of the churches that produce disorders, and fatal 
dissensions in the churches, that are reprehensible, and for this reason the 
churches ought to allow but one and the same doctrine publicly preached. 
Public worship is appointed for the edification of the church in glorifying 
God ; but any worship counteracts that end and ceases to be laudable on 
4;hose occasions when it only produces disturbances, and gives offence to the 



OE, THE COMMOX LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 371 

denomination. If any minister who feels himself called to preach the gospel, 
believes it absolutely necessary to preach another doctrine contrary to the 
denominational standards, let him first quit the church, ^vhere, for the sake 
of unity and uniformity, he is not allowed to perform his duty according to 
the dictates of his own conscience ; common decency dictates that he should 
withdraw from the church and go and join those who profess the same reli- 
gious views with himself. 'No man in this free country, even after he has en- 
dorsed a creed and joined a church, is bound by any human or ecclesiastical 
authority to adhere to the creed or the church a single day longer than he 
pleases. He is at perfect liberty to withdraw at any moment, and that with 
or without giving a reason for his conduct, as he thinks proper. But what 
becomes of the liberty of the church in which he thus seeks to remain, con- 
trary to its wishes and comfort, and to its real injury ? The great sin of 
heresy with wliich he is chargeable pales into insignificance as compared with 
the offence of remaining in the, communion of a church whose doctrines he 
has maligned and traduced, to the disturbance of the peace of the whole de- 
nomination. He has no more right to insist on remaining in the church, 
and being permitted publicly to oppose what he has solemnly vowed to receive 
and support, than a member of any voluntary association which he entered 
under certain engagements, but with which he no longer agrees, has a right 
obstinately to retain his connection with it, and to avail himself of the influ- 
ence which his connection gives him to tear it in pieces. 

Ecclesiastical heresy, then, is notliing more or less than a private opinion 
obstinately maintained by those entrusted with guidance in matters of religion 
and polity, that is contrary to the Scriptures, which the church has authorized 
to be taught. It does not consist in a total denial of Christianity, but of some 
of its principle doctrines, publicly and obstinately avowed. It is the right sys- 
tem of belief. It is a hard tiling to define, except \dewed from the stand- 
point of ecclesiastical government, for it is a relative term, and what is taken 
as heresy in a Baptist church might be orthodoxy held by those outside its 
pale. Viewed except from this standpoint it means nothing, for in many 
essential particulars no two denominations believe alike. Neither do we 
understand that orthodoxy is the belief of the majority of a church, other- 
wise truth would change as majorities change. Neither does orthodoxy mean 
the oldest doctrine held by the church, for many doctrines generally held in 
the early churches are universally rejected now. The oldest doctrine is cer- 
tainly not the truest, neither is a lie any better because it is an old one. But 
if orthodoxy dees not mean the system held by the majority, nor the oldest 
docti-ine of the church, it certainly means the essential fundamental truths of 
the Bible held by the whole Baptist denomination in all ages and times, or 
that which has been believed always by all Baptists and everywhere. Any 
attempt to define orthodoxy except from a denominational standpoint de- 
stroys it. But looked at from the standpoint of the churches, we find that 
there are certain great convictions underlying a church creed which are 
fundamental, to believe which a man is to be esteemed orthodox, and to deny 
which he is to be adjudged an heretic. 



372 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

Orthodoxy are those doctrines which have had a deep and an abiding hold 
upon the denominational mind over broad spaces and through long periods. 
Heresy is transient and effervescent ; orthodoxy only is permanent. Men do 
not adhere to heresy for its own sake, for it is sickening, but for the sake of 
something with which it is connected. After a while, under the scrutiny of 
the ever-watchful denominational eye, errors are eschewed and the truth 
retained. The substance of what a man believes is the fact inwardly held 
by the mind ; often the error consists in the verbal statement of what it con- 
ceives to be the truth. And in trying a man for heresy we ought always to 
be able to make this distinction, for there may be in the preaching and 
teaching of a man substantial truth, yet formal error ; that is to say, he may 
have an erroneous way of stating the truth. Many errors are mere blunders 
of phraseology, and the contentions about them are over words and their 
meaning rather than principles. The accused may not, through defects of 
mind and training, be able to distinguish between the spirit and the letter of 
the text. The profound problems of religion, the obscurity of the language 
by which they are revealed, the differences in minds, and the influences of 
education are among the things that tend to errors, but not always to here- 
sies. Simple errors may be no more than mistakes of the intellect. Heresy 
poisons and corrupts that which it professes to love and revere; error mis- 
leads, it is true, but it is not tainted with treason against Christ and the 
church. Heresy involves a voluntary and a persistent perversion of the 
truth. Heresy comes in conflict with fundamentals, while error has to do 
with non-essentials. Heresy differs from schism in that schismatics volun- 
tarily leave the church, while heretics have to be cast out and driven awaj. 
Hence to be an heretic a man must adhere to his error, though he knows 
that the church will condemn him. It involves a conscientious knowledge 
of his error, and a pertinacious wish to err. 

If an heretic preaches good things, as some do, among his errors, it matters 
not, it is not always lawful to hear him, unless when we are out of danger of 
his abuses also. We might listen to truth from the devil, if we were out of 
his danger; but because the devil is so deceptive and always tells the truth, 
and even quotes the Scriptures, for evil purposes, it is not safe to hear him. 
Besides, although it is lawful to believe a truth which an heretic tells us, yet 
it is not lavv'ful to go to school to one, to sit at his feet to learn of him, be- 
cause he that does so, makes him his master and thus surrenders himself to 
God's enemy. For faith and heresy, truth and error stand as the two great 
opposites in the religion of the gospel of Christ. Man is united to him by 
truth and faith, while error and heresy are those things which separate him 
from the Saviour. It is an essential element in every heresy that the heretic 
must contradict some fundamental doctrine of the Scriptures, which has been 
clearly stated, and become a part of the defined faith of the church. In 
making a statement of the doctrine of the Bible we may mistake the truth 
fmd say what is absolutely false ; it may be a contradiction, and in two con- 
tradictory statements both cannot be true. Errors of understanding and of 
insight are to be considered as defects ; but the errors of statement may be 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 373 

positive heresy, when uttered dehberately, and they are tenaciously adhered 
to. But there may be formal error, or error of statement, even where there 
is substantial truth ; for truth may be overstated, or understated, or mis- 
stated, and a false expression given to a true observation. After all the 
faith of the church becomes the touchstone, or test, of heresy, although it 
must be allowed to every heretic on trial to appeal from the formulas of 
faith to the Scriptures, but not from the Scriptures to the formulas of faith ; 
for articles of faith while they are the standards of belief, yet they are not an 
infallible epitome of the Scriptures, and therefore heresy is not to be tested 
alone by them. 

Ministers are but Christ's deputies and the churches ministering officials in 
His name and by its authority to preach the gospel and that alone. He? etics 
busy themselves with disputes, and disputes make heretics, but he who in 
Christ's name preaches the fundamental doctrine of repentance towards God 
and faith in Christ, and launches not out in the wide field of metaphysics, 
and philosophy, is truly orthodox, and neither becomes a heretic himself nor 
makes any by his teaching. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy 
and vain deceit, after the tradition of men. A church, or a council, in trying 
a case of heresy, ought to be able to distinguish between the minister who 
preaches an heretical doctrine through these vain deceits, and seeks to spread 
the same and obtain followers, and a layman, who might entertain the same 
views with no purpose to utter and disseminate them, although, really, to be 
an heretic in belief and conscience, is a sin, though it never appears in act, 
word or deed ; for God who sees the thoughts of man can lay it at his charge, 
but till it appear in something done, or said, it is not heresy proper. In- 
ward intentions which never appear by any outward act, have no place for 
human accusation, and hence the church can take no jurisdiction, for the 
church cannot judge of doctrine but by outward actions and utterances. 
Hence to laymen, the church grants them a fuller enjoyment of liberty of 
conscience and religious belief, if they be Christians, and are otherwise pious 
and orderly members of the church. The church ought to be slow to exclude 
all such private members who may err from the true and intended sense of 
some obscure and ambiguous text of Scripture, because if they desire and en- 
deavor to find the truth, and seek not to spread their views, no church ought 
to be swift to discipline them for errors who desire and endeavor to find 
the truth. Therefore, they who would seek to arraign a private member, who 
is a regenerate man, for every failure to believe everything taught by the 
church, are not therefore to be accounted zealous of the faith, their strife, 
being but carnal, for they are not questions so much of faith, wherein men 
seek such mastery over one another. But as a matter of obedience, and out 
of fidelity to his covenant obligations, every Baptist ought to accept the 
whole teachings of the church, and he is as much bound not to publicly and 
pertinaciously oppose those doctrines, as a regularly ordained minister ; if he 
should do so, they are both to be judged by the same rules. 

But when a minister has once by covenant transferred his right of judg- 
ing of doctrine to the chui'ch, those opinions, which the church demands that 



374 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDE:S-CE ; 

he shall preach, are no less his own opinions, than those of the church. There 
must be on earth some judicatory to apply the square, the plumb and the 
level to all teaching, to see whether what is taught be really the doctrine. 
While the Scriptures are a rule by which to decide all cases of heresy, yet 
they cannot be said to submit themselves to this alone ; if they do they pro- 
pose no more than to submit themselves to their own, or some other private 
interpretation thereof, or else why should there be any church government 
at all instituted, if Scripture itself could do the office of a judge in contro- 
versies of heresy? So when we see any one suspected of heresy unwilling to 
submit the same to the arbitrament of the church, it may be concluded that 
they seek not alone the liberty of conscience, but liberty of action ; not only 
so, but a further liberty of persuading others to his opinions, which if allowed, 
is destructive of the very essence of Baptist church government. So to 
maintain doctrines contrary to the teaching oi the Scriptures is a greater 
heresy in an ordained minister than in a private person. It is likewise a 
greater heresy in a professor of theology, in our seminaries, to maintain and 
teach any principle contrary to true doctrine than the same fact in another 
man ; also in a man that has such reputation for wisdom as that his counsels 
are followed, or his actions imitated. So in active evangelists their doctrines 
are the more hurtful if heresies than local ministers, for they corrupt but one 
body, while evangelists sow the seeds of discord broadcast, and should there- 
fore be the more promptly silenced. 

The church ought to be slow to take every fresh interpretation of the 
Scriptures from those who are reputed to be wise. A minister ought not to 
think that his skill in Latin, Greek or Hebrew, if he have any, gives him a 
privilege to impose upon his brethren in his own sense, every obscure place 
in Scripture ; nor ought he as often as he has imagined some fine interpreta- 
tion, not before thought of by others, to think he had it by inspiration, for 
he cannot be assured that his interpretation is true. As most of these curi- 
ous questions in divinity are first started in our schools of divinity, those 
trusted men, standing at their head, ought to bend and direct their efforts 
towards teaching the old doctrines and following the old land-marks rather 
than wrangling about new interpretations of the Scriptures, for they are not 
always the best to interpret the Scriptures to the rest, nor ought the rest 
every time to take untried their new interpretation of the word of God. For 
whatever is fundamental in religious doctrine, or polity, the church has long 
since interpreted and needs no further interpretation. All else is but the 
study of the curious and the cause of heresy. It all has a tendency to make 
the plainer sort of ministers, upon whose shoulders the Lord has placed the 
greater burden of preaching the gospel, whom the Scriptures have taught 
belief in Christ, love towards God and love for man, to forget their fidehty 
to the simple teachings of the gospel, and to place their belief in the disput- 
able doctrines of those who are often w^ise above that which is written. 
There is a certain sense in which the teachings of those standing at the head 
of our theological seminaries may be said to be the oracles of God, and there 
is another sense in which they must be regarded often as the conceits of fal- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 375 

lible and short-sighted men ; and it is no wonder that their value will be 
very often estimated according as they are regarded from one or the other 
point of view. I have the greatest respect for the piety and learning of these 
great and good men ; but, as it seems to me, the truth is in safer hands when 
confided to those who do not make such pretensions to learning, and in the 
hands of those who have not been so engrossed in teaching philosophy and 
metaphysics as often to overleap the truth and substitute these vagaries in the 
place thereof. 

It is very evident from the New Testament that in the primitive churches, 
not merely from the necessity of their condition, but from principle, the 
means of correcting heresy were more moral than coercive. From Titus we 
learn that it was not until admonition, reproof and instruction were ex- 
hausted, did the church resort to excommunication. A man luho is an heretic 
after the first and second admonition, reject. But to reject in this place does 
not always necessarily mean to excommunicate, but to give over admonish- 
ing him, to let him alone, as one to be convinced by himself. ■ Peter and 
Paul, though their controversy was great, yet they did not cast one another out 
of the church. But in those early times there were other pastors who were not 
so charitable as Diotrephes who would cast out of the church such as John 
himself, for it is said out of pride he took the pre-eminence, so early had am- 
bition entered the churches. 

All churches in dealing with heresy ought to remember that heresy of the 
heart is at least as bad and reprehensible as heresy of the head. Often we 
see two members of the same church, one of whom thoroughly believes in 
every part of the Bible — perfectly orthodox, but lives such a life that every 
one calls him justly a mean man. The other possibly is not so orthodox, 
but lives thoroughly up to all the principles of the church and the commands 
of God, and makes use of his belief to disturb the peace of the churches ; 
which, on general principles, ought to be excommunicated ? A great deal of 
bad theology is sometimes mixed up with good living, and a great of bad 
living is often mingled with good theology. Of course this could not be 
adopted as a rule in the trial of heresy, but certainly it ought to have its 
weight. Hence we might conclude that a false creed, whether written or 
unwritten, is not always the germ from which springs a false life. The 
most deadly heresy, and the one which does the most harm is the heresy, 
that one can he a Christian without living a Christian. If a man love me, 
he ivill keep my words. Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these 
my brethren, ye did it not unto me. 

It is the design of the devil to make us in love with our own opinions and 
he makes us to call them faith and religion, that we may be proud of our 
own superior knowledge and understanding; but why is not any vicious 
habit in a church member as bad, or worse than a false opinion ? Why are 
we sometimes so zealous against those we call heretics, and yet great friends 
of drunkards, and fornicators, swearers and idle persons in the Lord's vine- 
yard ? Is it because we are commanded by the apostles to reject a heretic, 
after the first and second admonition, and not to bid such an one God-speed ? 



376 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ,* 

Has not tlie apostle spoken as fiercely against communion with fornicators, 
and all practical disorders, as against communion with heretics ? If any 
man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a 
railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner^ with such man do not eat. These 
practices are contrary to the will of God, and those who practice them live 
as contrary to the laws of Christianity as a heretic. Besides we know what 
a drunkard is, and what it is to live an immoral life, but sometimes it is not 
so easy to ascertain what heresy is, in all the doubtful questions that agitate 
the wise and curious. Now ought we not to turn the tables and be as 
zealous for a good life as we are to look after heretics, who are themselves to 
be suppressed and avoided ? If a man be not a public teacher, whose busi- 
ness it is made to instruct and make disciples, and who otherwise lives a 
pious life, should fall into error, ought we not to be as compassionate to 
him and not add affliction to his error, and not destroy him, but to bear 
with him meekly, which is a precept of charity ? 

In all the animadversions against errors, made by the apostles, no pious 
person was ever condemned, but something that was seductive and had a 
tendency to disturb the peace of the churches, and when to their error they 
added impiety. So long as the error was entertained with charity and with- 
out human ends and secular interests, all was well, but when the errorist was 
a public minister, and became pertinacious in the maintenance of such error, 
to the disturbance of the peace of the churches, and with this design taught 
the same doctrine which private members might in the simplicity of their 
hearts, then he turned heretic, then all such were termed by the apostle, 
Seducers of minds, who seduce whole houses, teaching things they ought not, 
for filthy lucre^s sake. These indeed were not to be endured, but to be 
silenced, and severely rebuked and avoided. When any grevious error is 
voluntarily chosen, contrary to the known standards of the churches, and 
preached with the design to stir up strife, or if it has that effect, whether in- 
tended or not, and if it be a design of ambition, and the making of a faction, 
or if it be of pride and love of pre-eminence, as it was in Diotrephese, or out 
of eccentricity and peevishness of disposition, or out of a contentious spirit ; in 
all these cases he who preaches such errors is to be treated as an heretic and 
a common seducer of men's minds. If his opinions did commence upon 
pride, or is nourished by jealousy, or covetousness, or continues through 
stupid carelessness, or is increased by pertinacity, or is confirmed by 
obstinacy, then innocency of the error is dissipated, his innocency is changed 
into an offence, and merits its own punishment and is self-condemnatory. 

But in many of the quarrels over questions of heresy it is often perceiv- 
able that it is not so much a difference of opinion that is the cause of the 
ruptures and upheavals incident to church government, but a want of 
charity ; it is not the variety of understandings, but the jealousies and dis- 
union of the wills and affections of those who engage in them. Often 
opinions commence, and are upheld according as our terms are served and 
our several interests are preserved, and there is no cure for us but piety and 
more of the grace of God. An orthodox life with a happy admixture of 



OR, TEE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 377 

charity will make our belief orthodox, and not only so, but it will often make 
the belief of our brother unobjectionable. If we consult not humanity with 
all its petty hatreds, jealousies and imperfections in the choice of opinions, 
but search for truth without designs, and then be as careful to have charity 
for the opinions of others, we are sure we should find out more truth in our 
brother by this means, and thereby avoid many of the heartaches arising 
from what we now conceive to be heresy in him. There is a wide difference 
between ignorance and knowledge, and those who discuss a subject without 
explaining or proving anything with distinctness, making coufusion worse 
confounded, owe a great part of their obscurity and in conclusiveness to a 
neglect of definitions, and to an inaccurate use of language, forgetting how 
much ideas depend on words. Improper terms are chains which bind men 
to unreasonable utterances and practices. Errors and heresies are never so 
difficult to be destroyed, as when they have their root in language. Every 
improper term contains the germ of fallacious propositions ; it forms a cloud, 
which conceals the nature of the thing, and presents a frequently invincible 
obstacle to the discovery and understanding of the truth. Such errors cloud 
the minds of both the author and his readers, of the teacher and his disciples, 
of the preacher and his audience ; and from their very minuteness, and 
seeming insignificance, are only the more difficult to discover, and the less 
wiUingly acknowledged ; as people are indignant at being supposed hable to 
be duped by a trick apparently so inartificial, or to be groping in the dark, 
or to be eagerly searching at a distance for that which lies at their feet. 
From this source come heresies, schisms and divisions, and partings of com- 
munions, and sometimes persecutions and the dissolutions of all charity and 
fellowship in churches. Notice it, and you will find that nearly all our 
church troubles proceed from this, that all men are not of one mind and 
cannot see things alike, for that is neither necessary nor possible. But when 
every opinion is made an article of faith in order to denounce some supposed 
error in our brother, then every article is a good ground for a quarrel, and 
every quarrel makes a faction, and in the course of time every faction makes 
a schism. When things come to this posture in church afiairs we think we 
do not God's service, except we oppose our brother. By this want of 
charity it is to be hoped we preserve the body, if not the soul of religion, or 
being cold in charity, which is the greatest of ah the Christian virtues, we 
lose the reward of faith. 

But we would not be considered an apologist for errors or heresy, only we 
plead for charity ; for it cannot be denied that heresy is a very grievous 
crime— a calling of God's veracity in question, and imputing to him false 
things, and a destruction also of a good hfe and manners ; because upon the 
truth of, and faith in the creed of the church, obedience is built, for, after 
all, truth and faith are the moral causes of obedience. Heresy, therefore is 
a great sin, and he who is guilty of it is a great criminal against God, and 
in his sight, and every Christian should be as zealous against it as he can 
and employ every spiritual weapon against it. It has its degrees of malignity, 
and is as much more sinful than any act of personal vice as the soul is more 



378 A TKEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

noble titan the body, and a false doctrine is greater in dimension and extent 
than a single act of impunity. A single act of sin debauches the individual, 
but heresy is an unholy warfare against God and the church, and stands in 
the same relation to the church as treason does to the government. It 
wages an unrighteous war against the truth, and slays its thousands, and is 
like digging down or undermining the foundation of a house, and all the 
superstructure of hope and charity falls with it. Of all crimes against the 
church, it is the least excusable, for the true faith is the most easily kept, 
"svith the least trouble, of any grace in the world. There can be no pleasure 
in heresy, but when a man, by racking his brain, conjures up some strange 
metaphysical opinion and preaches it to the disturbance of the churches, 
it carries with it its own punishment. It is like stepping out of one's way 
to pick a quarrel with a friend, or sowing seeds of discord in one's o^YJl fam- 
ily. He who does it can have but one satisfaction, if satisfaction can be 
taken in such things, and that is, he can look over the wreck he has wrought 
and truly say. Behold ! what havoc I have made of the churches. 

In every system of theology, and especially church government, it is of as 
great importance to know the nature of heresy, what it is, and how it should 
be treated, as to know the nature and integrity of faith. Faith and heresy 
stand opposite to each other. He who takes faith for a purely intellectual 
habit, and forgets that it is the gift of God, has so little room, and so narrow 
a capacity, that he cannot lodge all those self-made opinions which they pre- 
tend are of her family. If faith can be thus received and considered, it 
comes not from God, but from the evil one. For although it be necessary 
for us to believe whatever we know to be revealed of God, yet it is not neces- 
sary, concerning many things, to know that God has revealed them ; that is, 
we ma;y be ignorant of, or doubt concerning many things, and indifferently 
maintain either view, when the question is not concerning God's veracity, or 
we do not impute to him false things. That which is of the foundation of 
faith, or is so closely annexed thereto, that it endangers the foundation, that 
only is necessary. All else is to be considered non-essential, in respect to 
the constitution of faith and need not be drav/n out, but may remain in 
the bowels of the fundamental truths, without danger to any person, unless 
some other accident or .circumstance, makes it then necessary and claims an 
explicit belief in the same way that the fundamental truths must be be- 
lieved, without which neither could the thing be acted, nor the proposition 
understood. For instance, if we believe in Christ, and have a saving knowl- 
edge and faith in his blood, there is annexed to this faith a like belief in his 
miraculous conception, his birth, crucifixtion, death, burial, resurrection and 
ascension, besides many other beliefs growing out of these fundamental 
truths, which qualify Christ for our Saviour, as well as makes us his faith- 
ful and obedient servants. Whatsoever is deducible from these articles of 
fundamental truths is necessary to be believed explicitly, especially by 
preachers and public teachers whose duty it is made, by reason of their call- 
ing, to know the truth, and to promulgate it, as it was taught by Christ and 
his apostles ; but it is not certain that every private member of the church 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 379 

shall be able to deduce whatsoever is either immediately or certainly deduci- 
ble from these premises ; and since salvation is promised to the explicit 
belief of these fundamental truths, it cannot be seen how any church can 
justify the making the way to heaven narrower than Christ has made it, by 
exacting of every one a definite and precise belief in all matters not neces- 
sary, the way to heaven being already so narrow that there are few that find 
it. For Christ and his apostles concealed nothing that was necessary to the 
integrity of Christian faith, or the salvation of our souls. Christ declared 
all the will of our Father, and the apostles were stewards and dispensers of 
the mysteries and concealed nothing, but taught the whole doctrine of 
Christ. If they had not, the term heresy could not now be applied to any 
teacher who might attempt to make up that faith entire, which the apostles 
left imperfect. But he who imagines that these holy men overlooked some 
doctrine necessary to be believed, and sets his wits to work to evolve that so- 
called doctrine, and forces it upon men's consciences, sets a snare to entrap 
his brother. 

The rule of Baptists has ever been, that nothing is necessary either to be 
believed, or done, unless it be in the Scriptures laid down. For if the Scrip- 
tures be the entire rule of faith and practice, that is, of the whole service and 
worship of God, then nothing is an article of faith, nothing can be taken as 
an example in church government, that is not wholly set down in the Scrip- 
tures. That which was the faith at first is contained in the Scriptures, and 
the same was then, is now, and shall ever be the same. As it was in the 
beginning, is the watchword of every Baptist. For to what purpose was the 
Scriptures furnished, if in all questions of faith and new springs of error we 
should not be permitted to go to the teachings of our Saviour, and the writings 
of those inspired men he set apart to give the law of the church? For no 
divine truth is warrantable, but what they taught and no necessity is to be 
pretended but what they imposed. Whatever they taught is our creed. 
There can be nothing added to it, no, not even for the purpose of condemn- 
ing what we may conceive to be a new heresy. Whatever was against this 
was against the faith. Anything else may be reproved, if it be false, but it 
ought not to be so reproved by adding to the creed new articles for that 
purpose. There is no heresy, it matters not how infamous or slight, but 
this creed is sufficient for its condemnation. There is no need of a Mcene 
council to propound it, nor any Thirty-Nine articles to explain it. The 
symbols of our faith and of our hope, which, being delivered by the apostles, 
is not written with paper and ink, but in the fleshy tables of our hearts, by 
the finger of him who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

It often happens that truth and falsehood are so tempered in a heretic, 
that truth may lose much of its reputation by its mixture with error, and the 
error may become more plausible by reason of its being joined with the 
truth. And since errors are sins when they are contrary to charity and the 
Scriptures, although thus mixed mth truth, that interpretation is the truest 
and most innocent that best promotes the cause of truth. Matters of heresy 
are equally punishable by the church, whether they be mixed with truth or 



380 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

not, and if an heretic could escape the censures of the church by pretend- 
ing to innocency, by persuading himself that what he preaches is mixed 
with gospel truth, there were as great a gate opened to all disorders as will 
seduce all the churches in the land. And therefore the apostles made no 
scruple of condemning such persons as heretics, who dogmatized errors 
under the pretense that there was some truth mixed with them, and that 
they were preached for the good of their charges. The truth is, some men 
are so wedded to, and in love with their own fancies and whimsical opinions, 
as to think they need give no heed to the standards of truth and belief 
erected by the churches, and by them authorized to be taught, but that the 
whole fabric of theology depends upon the preaching of their own metaphy- 
sical and philosophical vagaries, and whosoever does not believe like them- 
selves, are to be considered as enemies to the truth, and are to be won over 
to their way of thinking, although in so doing the churches are rent in 
twain. If the false things they preach be against faith, that is, a destruction 
of any part of the foundation, it is with zeal to be resisted, and we have for 
it an apostolic warrant, Contend earnestly for the faith. But as the doctrine 
recedes further from the foundation, our contention should become less 
earnest, for the necessity is not so great ; the lightness of an article should 
be considered with the weight of the precept of charity. And therefare there 
are some errors to be reproved rather by a private friend than a public cen- 
sure, and the persons not avoided but admonished in the tenderness of 
brotherly love, and their doctrine rejected, but not their communion. For 
there is no heresy in the Scriptures called damnable, for which we ought to 
condemn a man, but what is impious, or directly destructive of the faith of 
the gospel, or the body of Christianity, such of which Peter speaks. But there 
were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers 
among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the 
Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. Such as 
these are truly heresies, and such as these are certainly damnable. But 
there are no degrees either of the truth, or falsehood, every true proposition 
being alike true. But that an error is more or less to be condemned and cen- 
surable, is not told us in the Scriptures, but is left to be determined by the 
person, and his manners, by the position he holds in the church, by his 
education, his influence, by the pertinacity with which he preaches the error, 
and especially the discord it occasions. Now because some doctrines are 
absolutely necessary, and some are clearly not necessary, the church enjoins 
the preaching of those necessary, and in those indifferent a greater liberty 
is allowed and left to men indifferently, and in the preaching of them, we 
are to take into consideration the men who preach them, as well as the 
doctrines they preach, and the evil they do. 

But heresy being a work of the flesh, and all heretics being traitors to 
ecclesiastical government, whose pernicious errors have a demoralizing influ- 
ence upon the churches, the church of which the heretic is a member, is to 
do its duty in restraining those mischiefs which may happen by their preach- 
ing. If it be a false doctrine in any sense, and disturbs the peace of the 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 881 

churches, those who preach it must first be admonished, and, if possible, be 
conviuced by sound doctrine, and put to silence by spiritual evidence. 
Should this fail to reclaim him, he should be restrained by ecclesiastical 
authority, and his license to preach, for and in the name of the church, taken 
from him. But as the church may proceed thus far, yet the church ought 
not to pursue him farther than to pass these spiritual censures, and should 
the delinquent meekly submit to these ecclesiastical reproofs, his status as a 
church member should not be meddled with. For if any severer judgment 
be passed upon the person erring, if he be unjustly excommunicated, noth- 
ing will answer and make compensation for such an injury, when he is will- 
ing to be silent as to the false doctrine taught. It is otherwise when he does 
not willingly submit to these admonitions. If he persists in preaching the 
false doctrine, the peace of the churches and the unity of the doctrine is 
best conserved by his peremptory exclusion from the church. For if, under 
such circumstances, there is pertinacity in preaching a doctrine, for which 
he has been admonished, there should be an equal pertinacity in judgment 
on the part of the church. 

The general result, therefore, at which we arrive is, that although the pro- 
motion of religious truth and the suppression of religious error, in a free 
and independent church like that of the Baptists, are universally admitted 
to be desirable objects ; yet the churches are not able, owing to the nature 
of our pohty, to compass them effectually, except through moral suasion, 
rather than through coercion and compulsion. For it sometimes happens 
that the fruitless efforts made by the churches to forcibly uproot heresies, are 
not only so much labor wasted and thrown away, but they aggravate and 
embitter the existing dissensions and animosities of the rival factions and 
create new causes of discord, which would not otherwise have existed. This 
result, however, which establishes the practical doctrine that the churches 
are to be neutral at first, and, for a time, in questions involving religious truth 
and error, startles many not of our faith and practice. It seems to them to 
involve the consequence that, by being neutral, or not putting in force and 
operation some ecclesiastical machinery to suppress these disorders, the 
churches declare their indifference to the truth. They think that the 
churches, by their omission to take a part in the controversy, implies an 
opinion that the question at issue is unimportant. The obstinance of the 
the churches, not immediately interested in the quarrel, from identifying 
themselves with one of the rival parties, appears to them in the light of a 
sinful neglect of religious duty. But experience has proved that the 
churches are not fit for the office of promoting the truth and repressing 
error, when they arrogantly assume the role of judges in these matters in a 
divided church, but that they are better performed when left to the exclu- 
sive care of the church immediately involved, which, in Baptist church 
economy, is the one to which the delinquent belongs. There is nothing in 
the constitution or essence of sister-churches which is inconsistent with their 
being judges of religious truth, but they always discharge their duty illy, 
and never fail thereby to sow the seeds of discord in their own midst. They 



382 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUKISPKUDENCE ; 

are capable of doing work of tliis kind ; but the work is and can be better 
done by the local charcli or a prudent council without their assistauce. Sis- 
ter churches ought to abstain from the assumption of a partisan character, 
and from undertaking to decide on disputed questions of religious truth, for 
the same reason that a man ought to abstain from taking part in family- 
quarrels. Sister churches are capable of acting the part of a theologian, 
but in church quarrels, over theological questions, it is a bad theologian. 
There is a constant tendency of those not acquainted with Baptist church 
jurisprudence to over-estimate the province and capabilities of apostolic 
church government; to assume that it can exercise a greater influence over 
the churches than it really possesses, and to forget that it can only act 
within a sphere determined by certain conditions, and is endowed with eccle- 
siastical omnipotence in no other sense than that its powers have no lawful 
limits. If the practical province of ecclesiastical government, in matters 
involving truth and error, had been considered with greater attention to the 
apostolic models — if facts, and not ideas and theories, had been consulted, 
it would not have been supposed to be invested with a character which is 
unsuited to it, and been loaded with so many moral obligations and duties, 
to which it is not properly subject. 

It is by the endowment of denominational universities, colleges, academies 
and seminaries of learning that the best provision for the promotion of the 
truth and the suppression of error can be attained. Where the government 
seeks to aid in the diffusion of knowledge it ought to avoid predetermining 
any set of opinions to be adopted by the teacher, or other object of its patron- 
age. It ought to abstain from stereotyping any modes or formulas of 
thought ; from imposing any test, or requiring an adhesion to any party or 
sect. But where the denomination endows an institution of learning it is 
legitimate for it to compass these ends, and to teach and propagate the dis- 
tinctive doctrines of that people, and to indoctrinate the young in the pecu- 
liar tenets of the denomination upon whose bounty it is founded. In the 
establishment of these institutions of learning, it is incumbent on the denomi- 
nation to establish a standard of sound opinions and doctrines, and to use all 
its best endeavors and powers for the purpose of maintaining and diffusing 
the truth and the suppression of heresy. By founding universities and theo- 
logical seminaries, by endowing professorships and lectureships, it has, in- 
deed, contributed powerfully to the diffusion of the true doctrines of the 
gospel, and fitted many young men for the work of maintaining them. Not 
only so, but it has not left it, in general, to the several professors and 
teachers, the liberty of forming their own judgment as to the opinions and 
doctrines which they would inculcate, but has sought to induce them to 
make the matter of their teaching come up to the standard laid down by the 
denomination. 

Every denominational institution of learning, worthy of the name, ought 
to be organically connected with, and under the control of, the denomina- 
tion, so that whatever doctrine and principles are therein taught ma}'' be 
overlooked by the denomination in whose name they profess to teach. Bad 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 383 

doctrines and errors taught by our great universities and seminaries are 
almost invariably followed to a greater or less extent by those who are taught 
therein. And, on the other hand, good and sound principles, in respect 
either of conduct or opinion, on the part of such institution, never fail to 
produce a beneficial and wholsesome effect. In the way of example, by the 
encouragement of merit, and the bestowment of honors and degrees a de- 
nominational institution can do much to propagate and countenance sound 
doctrines, to establish a high and correct standard of denominational con- 
duct, and to encourage the preaching of a pure and genuine gospel standard 
of truth. If by teaching principles to which the denomination could not 
give its indorsement, the probability is that the endowment, thus perverted 
or misapplied, would be either withdrawn or merely wasted ; and that the 
doctrines taught would gain little or no acceptance among the denomination 
if it was known that they were still maintained, by the institution, merely 
through the influence of its endowed chairs. Hence the denomination holds 
a sort of a censorship over its institutions of learning, and of necessity is 
bound to do so, if it would propagate and keep pure the doctrine, otherwise 
it would render itself responsible for the errors which it permitted to be pro- 
pagated through these religious institutions. 

A denomination may likewise countenance sound opinions and eliminate 
heresies by patronizing and upholding religious journals and newspapers 
wliich promulgate those opinions and are founded upon them. A sound 
and judicious religious press, with learned and orthodox men at its head, 
when governed by sound principles, thus contributes materially to the 
establishment of not only a good code of morals, but of orthodoxy for the 
guidance of the denomination. Unlike denominational schools, experience 
has proved that the denomination cannot advantageously discharge the office 
of censorship of public discussion in matters of religious opinion, but that 
the denomination makes more progress towards the discovery and recogni- 
tion of truth when it is unassisted by the well-meant, though often ill-directed 
efforts of a denominational ownership and control of its religious journals. 
In those denominations that own and control the religious press, it has been 
noticed that there is really but little freedom of discussion, and but little 
search after the truth except as it is viewed from the standpoint of those 
who stand at the head of the press, and presume to say who shall speak for 
the denomination, and what they shall say, and how they shall say it. The 
practical abandonment of this plan in a free system of church government, 
and the general discredit into which it has fallen, affords a strong ground 
for believing that the denomination is incapable by this means of discharging 
the duty of controlling religious opinions with success, and that the accumula- 
tion of experience is adverse to the system, and that there is a radical defect 
in the theory which extends the control of the denomination over the press 
and its field of speculative truth. 

ISlnch. truth is eliminated from error, and much error is suppressed by un- 
trammeled discussion through the medium of the press, and unless freedom 
is allowed, often error will triumph over the truth. Truth never suffers by 



384 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JUr.ISPRUDENCE ; 

agitation, but always shines the brighter and comes out victorious. The only 
censorship over its columns should be exercised by those who stand at the 
head of the press, to see that absolute fairness be done to all who enter the 
arena and to see that all discussion be conducted in the proper spirit, and 
for the proper ends. Thus they themselves undertake the invidious office of 
public censors over public opinions and become monitors and castigators of 
men and measures. From the relation in which religious papers stand to 
the denomination, being dependent on their sale for their existence, it is 
natural that they should seek to render their opinions and conduct accept- 
able to the whole denomination, and thus they often follow, as well as lead 
denominational opinion. We see, therefore, that by its continuity of charac- 
ter, by becoming a denominational organ, and by sometimes following, as 
well as leading, religious opinion, a paper obtains a considerable authority, 
independently of the force of its reasoning, and is largely responsible for any 
false doctrine that may creep into our system of jurisprudence, by reason of 
a want of watchfulness in detecting it. By inserting communications and 
documents on both sides of a question, it contributes to furnish materials for 
a fair judgment, and to eliminate errors and heresies which otherwise might 
arise. Whenever a member has been ill-treated or anything has gone wrong 
in the practice of the churches there is only one method of defence in our 
system, — an appeal may be made to the whole denomination, and the only 
means of making this appeal is by the denominational press. Thus the 
liberty of, and the free access to the use of the press is infinitely more valu- 
able amongst Baptists than amongst all others ; it is the only cure for some 
of the evils which our free system may produce. The absolute equality of 
Baptists sets them apart and weakens them ; but our Baptist press places a 
powerful weapon within every member's reach, which the weakest and the 
strongest of them may use. Thus it becomes one of the chief instruments of 
religious liberty, as it is also one of the best correctives. 

The great body of the Baptists of this country are determined to have the 
liberty of expressing their opinions. K religious thought is free, liberty of 
discussion should be free, and if they cannot have it one way it will mani- 
fest itself in another. Should people suffer and not complain ? How could 
existing errors and abuses be made evident to the denomination at large if 
they were not exposed, and how can they be so exposed unless through the 
denominational press? How could the machinery of church government 
be improved and the doctrine kept pure if a perpetual bar was to be 
put on free and untrammeled criticism ? And so the people will strive for 
free speech. If they are denied a hearing in the regularly constituted 
organs of communication, others will be started, "if for no other purpose than 
to be heard. If a denominational paper is run in the interest of the whole 
people and not for a party or faction, a respectful hearing should be given to 
all sides. All the people should be allowed to discuss what they please, 
subject only to those moderate restraints of ordinary journalistic courtesy 
which cannot be considered as interfering with freedom of discussion. 

The history of the life of the denominational press brings out, too, into 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 385 

clear light, its various functions, and shows when they began to operate and 
exert their most powerful influences. The earliest, and at the same time the 
great fundamental function of the press, was what may be called the expres- 
sive function, as it was first used by the denomination for the purpose of 
describing their religious condition, or circumstances, or expressing their 
religious feelings. Not only so, but when any abuses existed or any errors 
appeared, their first natural instinct was to seek redress through the denomi- 
national press. If this was denied, especially in the ruder states of the 
denomination, or by the less informed, redress was ordinarily sought by 
separating into factions and church divisions. 

But since our denomination has progressed towards universal education, 
and those who control our great denominational journals have become more 
liberal in their management of the press and have learned something of the 
true theory of church government, the people have learned to seek redress 
through the medium of the religious press, by formulating their complaints 
and informing the denomination of those things of which they complain. 
The denominational press was thus, in its first and earliest function, an 
informing voice so to speak, admonishing the denomination of any abuses in 
doctrine or practice ; for the worst evils in faith or practice are in a fair 
way for removal, in our Baptist economy, when they are discovered and 
protruded on the denominational gaze. If the great discussions, which 
sometimes agitate the denomination, did not take place freely in our denomi- 
national press, then there would be much cause to lament that the older 
practice of rival speakers addressing a meeting, and of the meeting being 
more strictly deliberative and consultative was not continued ; but no great 
discussion now takes place which is not carried on at full length in almost 
every first-class denominational paper in the United States. Thus discus- 
sion is as thorough as if it took place at a meeting, and thus thousands of 
readers are given the materials for forming an opinion on the points at 
issue The same may be said of the deliberations of our conventions and 
associations, for if these deliberations were not reported in the religious press, 
a vast amount of the influence of such bodies would be gone, for a very 
small proportion of the denomination would catch the inspiration. The 
suitability of the religious press for the moulding of opinions is indeed so 
manifest, and is now so generally acknowledged, that I need not dwell 
further on this function of it. 

If the need for the denominational press as a moulder of religious opinion 
was felt in the dark days of persecution centuries ago, how manifestly greater 
becomes the necessity for its functions as years have passed, when now Bap- 
tists are just beginning to enlarge their borders, and to multiply their needs 
as they have doubled and trebled their numbers an hundred, yea a thousand 
fold, and as they are fast becoming the leading denomination of the world. 
Moreover, the experience of its advantages and utility has ingrained or 
interwoven it into the very fibre of the religious life of the denomination. 
That it is here, and here to stay, therefore there can be no question. Whether 
we like it, or deplore it, whether it voices our peculiar sentiments or not, 
25 



386 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

whether we approve or disapprove of it, whether we admire its power or 
tremble at the dangers involved in its use and abuse, the religious press is 
an unavoidable, inevitable necessity. Just as the ministry is necessary 
to the preaching of the gospel ; just as language is necessary for in- 
dividual intercourse, so is the press necessary for general ecclesiastical inter- 
course'. Furthermore, it is to be borne in mind that the denomination, 
though happily widely tolerant of the freedom of its press, and giving the 
fullest latitude that even an enthusiast for religious discussion could desire, 
is very hostile to it if it pass beyond well-defined limits. Such abuses of the 
press should be zealously guarded against by the editors themselves, who 
stand at the head of these journals, and who are responsible for their con- 
duct. For great as is the liberty of the press in this free country, there are 
checks and limits beyond which it is not permitted, or rather if those limits 
are passed, the transgressor lays himself open to denominational censure as 
well as the penalties of the law. 

It being the prerogative of the denomination to use all its powers for 
furthering all the good ends to which its powers are capable, the establish- 
ment of denominational publishing houses is another powerful agency for the 
promulgation of the truth and the suppression of error. It is to be doubted 
whether there be any other one agency, aside from the actual preaching of 
the gospel, that has done so much good for the spread of the truth^ and the 
suppression of error as the publication and circulation of pure Baptist litera- 
ture. To be able to say whether it be pure or false, it must come from a 
press whose endorsement gives it authority and authenticity, vouched for by 
its admission into the collection of its publications. These institutions, 
founded and patronized by the bounty of the denomination, ought to be so 
cautious in their censorship over those authors who submit their productions 
for publication, that unless their works sparkle and bristle with the truth of 
the gospel, and be so in harmony therewith, that when they put the seal of 
their approval upon books issuing from these houses, it ought to be all the 
advertisement needed to give them currency among the denomination. It 
is not the province of these institutions to say what men shall write for the 
press, or how they shall write it ; but it is peculiarly their duty to pass upon 
the orthodoxy of what they have written, and to say whether it comes up to 
the high standard of the denomination for whose use it is intended and whose 
sponsors they are, so as to receive their endorsement and the seal of their ap- 
proval. When it is generally understood that denominational publishing 
houses will give their indorsement to no production except such as are ortho- 
dox, and reject such as are wanting in religious merit, there is erected a de- 
clared standard in religious truth which is safe to follow, and thus it becomes 
authoritative. 

But doubtless the greatest safeguard thrown around the truth is exercised 
by the churches, or by presbyters appointed by them, invested with a dele- 
gated power, in ascertaining the fitness of candidates for the Christian 
ministry to preach the gospel, for and in the name of the churches, and in 
stamping them with the public character of the sacred calling. The 



OR, THE COMMOIT LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 387 

importance of the selection thus made by the churches, mainly depends on 
the judicious exercise of the discretion confided to the ordaining presbytery, 
and on the qualifications which it guarantees. Thus these ordaining presby- 
teries stand at the very threshold of the Christian ministry, and become the 
representatives of the churches, charged with the solemn duty of seeing that 
no unregeuerate, no unfit, unsound or unsuitable person enters upon this 
sacred office. If ever the truth is to be conserved and presei'ved among 
Baptists, it must be mainly done by the ministry whom the churches license 
and ordain to preach it. The churches should exercise a rigid censorship 
over the truth, and necessarily over those whose business it is made to preach 
it. To be indifferent, whether we embrace falsehood or truth, is the great 
road to error. Men do not know the truth by intuition. Of course as to 
the truth of ones own conversion and regeneration, we ought to have some 
experimental knowledge of the truth of that fact. But as to other truths of 
the Christian religion, ministers, as well as others, must learn them. In 
order, therefore, to determine whether a man entering the Baptist ministry 
is competent to proclaim the truth, there must be a substantial agreement 
between him and the denomination, on both doctrine and practice. If all 
the denomination have diligently sought out and found the truth and re- 
mained steadfast in it, and all concur therein, if this consent extends over 
many generations the same, a candidate for the ministry should not hesitate 
to embrace it, and to preach it with fidelity to the church. Complete assent 
to the truths taught in the word of God as fundamental to salvation, as 
understood by Baptists, must be made the condition precedent to the entry 
upon this ministry, and required of every Baptist minister. By all means 
the pastor of a church should be sound in the faith of the gospel. As no 
body can be sound when the head, or any vital member, is violently affected, 
or subject to disease, so no church can be in a healthy condition when its 
pastor is unsound in the faith, depraved, weak or disordered. Be assured 
the membership will be very apt to copy the failings as well as the virtues 
of their pastor, or at any rate to palliate their own by reference to those of 
their pastor. In determining what truths are so fundamental as to make 
assent to them requisite, each ordaining council in each case, must use its 
best judgment under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. There is no room 
here for private judgment, contrary to the uniform teaching of the churches : 
Knowing this first, that no prophecy ^of the Scripture is of any private inter- 
pretation. The truth is not one thing to-day, and another thing to-morrow 
— not one thing preached by one man, and another preached by another — 
but it is the same thing at all times, and everywhere. It is error that is 
changeable — one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow — and can be 
warped and twisted to suit all creeds and all purposes. Will the candidate 
preach the doctrine, and preach it with fervor and fidelity ? is the burning 
question that should concern every ordaining council? If he will not, or if 
he cannot, it would be a flagrant act of injustice to the great denomination, 
to ordain him. Will he preach the gospel of truth, as it is in Christ Jesus, 
or will he preach philosophy and metaphysics and nonsense and trash ? If 



388 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

he preaches the former he is worthy to be inducted into this sacred office ; if 
he preaches the latter it is doubtful whether the Lord ever accounted him 
worthy putting him into the ministry. 

It is exceedingly important that Baptists should study these principles, 
for they belong to that denomination whose duty it is made to spread the 
truth over the globe, because wherever this boon is found there we find a 
free church and an open Bible, and all other blessings accompany it. We 
belong to that religious community whose obvious task it is, among other 
proud and sacred tasks, to rear and spread ecclesiastical and civil liberty 
over regions in every part of the earth, at home and abroad. We belong 
to that peculiar people which alone have the words self-government and soul- 
liherty inscribed upon our banners. We belong to that system of churches, 
the models of which are found alone in the sacred Scriptures, and whose 
great lot it is to be placed with the full inheritance of freedom, on the 
noblest and richest soil in the world, a nation favored of God and peopled 
with more Baptists than any other country in the world. This is the period 
when they should arige in all their strength and battle manfully for the 
truth, as it is in Christ Jesus, and these are the reasons why it is incumbent 
upon them again and again to present to their minds the value of these 
principles, to themselves and to the world, how we must guard and .maintain 
them, and why, if they neglect them, the world, especially the religious 
world, may again be steeped in error and in darkness. 

If there is a class of men, upon whom it would be more binding to be sound 
in the faith, able men, good men and true Christian gentlemen, that class 
are our denominational editors. To all thinking men, the calling of an edi- 
tor of a religious paper seems a very grave one, and should never be entered 
without a full knowledge of the responsibility it carries with it, and hence 
it becomes the more necessary to consider the ethical obligations of the con- 
ductors of these organs of public opinion. In no case whatever can an edi- 
tor of, or contributor to, a religious paper be allowed to utter a known or 
suspected falsehood, or to promulgate a pernicious error, or to assert any- 
thing against the reputation of individuals or the churches. It is of no 
avail to say that the assertion, if false, will be contradicted. A religious 
paper ought ever to keep in mind that it acts in a most unfair and ungentle- 
manly manner by using that advantage which it weekly has over a private 
individual, of uttering, to many hearers, whatever it pleases. If to preach a 
false doctrine is highly reprehensible in a minister of the gospel, it is, on 
this account, far more so in a religious paper. Unsound denominational 
papers should be frowned down and lose all support ; sound and good ones 
ought to meet with all possible encouragement and support. While our 
editors have the right to act as censors over their contributors, their readers 
likewise have corresponding rights, and cannot dispense with the censorial 
principle any more than they can, but will hold them to a strict accounta- 
bility for a breach of good faith on their part. Besides, a religious news- 
paper has, in fnct, in the present day, to live under the scrutinizing gaze of 
its readers, and be in doctrinal touch with them, otherwise it will become a 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 389 

paper without readers. Thus the denominational press, as an educating 
medium and the moulders of orthodox opinion, is supplemented by a never- 
ceasing control over it, and the power of its intelligent readers becomes un- 
ceasingly elective. They in turn have a moral force, which is sufficient and 
so powerful that no denominational paper could venture to defy it for any 
length of time. Indeed, so far from religious papers endeavoring to survive 
in defiance to the opinions and wishes of the bulk of their readers, hundreds 
of instances have occurred of papers signally failing for want of patronage, 
in consequence of what they considered vital differences in doctrine between 
them and their readers. Thus the restraint is mutual and wholesome. 

But I do not flatter myself that I have handled the subject of heresy in 
all its phases. It is a great field in itself, and would require a volume to treat 
it in all its relations to church government. Much precious blood has been 
shed in the early ages of Christianity and even subsequently by the fury of 
men under an inquisitorial system of church polity that blackens the annals 
of the times in which it occurred. Let the reader, if he can, imagine the 
sad fate of a people living in those dark ages holding to and preaching 
principles held by the Baptists of the world at this day, how they were 
hated and persecuted, impaled, emboweled, beheaded and burned at the 
stake ! But, finally, the patience of the Lord became exhausted, and that 
hydra-headed monster, the hierachical church, was temporally overthrown, 
and the light of religious and political liberty began to shed its effulgent 
light over a benighted world, and the true church which, in all those years, 
had been hid away in the caves and mountains of God's Providence, came 
forth as from the fire, purified and clothed in the habiliments of His power, 
the possessors of a free church, a free gospel and an open Bible. Oh ! the 
many crimes that have been committed in the name of religion. But his- 
tory has in no place recorded an instance where the Baptists ever persecuted 
any one for their leligious belief, but have invariably been persecuted for 
opinion's sake, and have freely offered up their lives at the stake rather than 
forsake their principles. But, doubtless, all this was ordained and foreor- 
dained of God as a school to prepare a people on earth to receive and pre- 
serve the true faith of the gospel. They receive and preserve this faith by 
a succession, more of gospel laws and Scriptural principles, in the shape of 
an unwritten and unwritable creed, than by a pretended succession of popes 
and bishops which cannot be traced back to Christ, the founder of the 
churches, and which if they could, would not be efficacious if they held not 
the law and the, truth taught by Christ. 

It has not been our intention in this short chapter to discuss the character 
and tendency of heresy as a theological question, nor to give an account of 
the several forms of belief which have, from time to time, been denounced by 
Baptists as heresies. It has not been touched upon as applied to persons not 
of the Baptist faith, or those persons professing a different religion, as Meth- 
odists, Presbyterians or Episcopalians. It has been treated of as an ofifence 
of those who, professing to be Baptists, use the right of private judgment, 
and choose their own form of doctrine, instead of conforming to the declared 
will of Baptist churches. 



390 A, TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDEXCE J 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE/ CHRISTIAN MI^ISTEY ; THEIR CALL, ORDINATION, POWERS AND DUTIES. 

""^TO greater controversy ever engaged the attention of the religious world 
-JLM than that of the call, ordination, powers and duties of the Christian 
ministry. It is proposed in this place to study the subject from the stand- 
point of Baptist church jurisprudence as it bears upon church polity. There 
is, no doubt, but that these controversies have arisen from not properly 
understanding the true nature of church government. The authority we 
now see exercised by pseudo-ecclesiastics is but the result of a false develop- 
ment of primitive church polity, and is neither sanctioned by the Scriptures 
nor the necessities of the times in which it originated. And as all the 
various modes of church government profess to imitate the apostolic models 
and claim to be founded on and agreeable to the Scriptures, it would be 
well to study this subject in the light of what is reflected in the record itself. 
The purity, the marvelous growth and the spirtual development of Baptist 
churches, may be, in a great measure, attributed to the obedience of their 
ministry to local church authority and supremacy. To the error that the 
ministry is entitled thereby, as ministers, to the right of governing the 
churches, may be attributed all the ecclesiastical darkness that has come 
over the religious world. Much of the distortion of, and departure from, 
primitive church government may also be attributed to the error that the 
Jewish , economy is a pattern or rule for the modeling of the churches of 
Christ under the gospel dispensation. We shall, therefore, labor to show 
that the ministry have no authority, ex-qffido, to govern the churches, but 
were by the Saviour commissioned only to declare the will of Christ con- 
cerning the church, and then all were left to their natural rights and liber- 
ties in constituting and framing themselves into churches according to their 
own prudential rules and constitutions, under the laws and precepts of the 
gospel. 

The Christian ministry is a divine institution, having a divine power and 
efficacy in: it, above and beyond the act of ordination itself. This ordina- 
tion has. a two-fold significance. First : It is the authoritative act of the 
church in investing those whom the Holy Spirit has called and the church 
ordained, with pastoral authority over a local church. Secondly : The act 
of the church in conferring upon those in like manner called and ordained, 
the authority of a minister of the gospel, without the charge of a church. 
One is a regularly ordained minister, with full authority, as such, while the 
latter is a licensed minister with limited authority. It is evident that 
although the church ordains its ministers and invests them with ecclesiasti- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 391 

cal authority, tlie Holy Spirit calls them, for we read that, The Holy Ghost 
said, separate Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunio I have called them. 
From which also we learn that God does not wait for men to enter the min- 
istry, but he calls them by his Spirit. 

The service rendered God is regulated by two sorts of engagements : those 
which are voluntary and those which do not depend on the will of man. 
For seeing man is in many things left in his liberty of choice, there are call- 
ings unto which he enters willingly, and seeing he has a dependence on the 
Divine Providence there are some engagements under which God puts him 
without his own free choice. In God's own way he ranges every one of his 
servants in his churches, where he assigns every one his own proper place, 
that he may point out to him the relation which ties him to others, and the 
duties that are peculiar to the rank which he holds, and in proportion to the 
gifts with which God has endowed him ; and he places every one in his 
proper calliug and rank by his education and inclinations, which assigns and 
disposes men in their proper places. This involuntary call of a minister is 
such as God puts men under without their own choice, at the same time im- 
buing them with his Holy Spirit to make them sufficient unto the great 
work, and such as are called are obliged to execute it, and cannot avoid 
doing it, unless they have reasonable excuses in the sight of God. But the 
callings which have only for their cause the Divine Providence, and which 
are dependent on man's will, such as the putting of one into the ministry, 
are divine institutions, and have nothing in them that is unjust. 

For it is the hand of God by which they are formed, that points out to 
man what is the duty he owes to God and his fellow-man. Thus the great- 
est part of men being called to the ministry looking on this holy engagement 
as painfid and unprofitable in this world, as being only a grievous and 
heavy yoke, contrary to their personal interest and inclinations, shake them 
off, as much as they can, with impunity. They ought, on the contrary, to 
reverence in it that order of God which is in a special and peculiar manner 
allowed to them, and execute it with that fidelity and earnestness which they 
owe to whatever he commands. 

The customary law of Baptist churches has established the practice of first 
licensing those whom the Holy Spirit has called to the ministry. As the 
church is the custodian of the truth, and the vehicle of the gospel, no one 
has the right to preach that gospel, for and in the name of the church, 
except he be especially authorized so to do by the church, for to church 
sovereignty is annexed the right of teaching, who shall teach and what shall 
be taught. It is equally to the benefit of religion and church polity that 
those who propose to preach the gospel shall be put upon trial, to see 
whether they be really called to the work of the ministry, as well as to their 
fitness for the work. It is not ground enough to be assured by the licentiate 
of the truth of his call, that his piety and integrity in the church is well 
known. For the most pious, intelligent and sincere persons may have been 
deceived by others, and themselves be mistaken, it is always highly prudent 
for the church to consider well the genuineness of the call, even of those who 



892 A TREATISE JTPO:S BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE ; 

are the most to be credited, to see whether they agree with the other clear 
and certain proofs that may be had of the truth of their divine call to the 
ministry. Their rights and duties extend only to preaching and teaching 
wherever occasion presents itself, and not to the administration of the ordi- 
nances of the church. From which we see that a licensed minister is not 
properly speaking a minister of the church, notwithstanding he receives his 
authority to preach from the church. For the right of doing anything is 
called authority, and by authority is always understood the right of doing 
any act, and any act done by authority is done by license from him whose 
right it is to do it. Therefore, the church being charged with the duty of 
preaching, has the right to license others to do it for them, and when the 
licentiate is limited in what, and how far he shall act for the church, the 
church wiU own nothing beyond his license to act. 

The custom of setting a man apart to the full work of the ministry is both 
impressive and significant. Now a regular minister is one who, in the prov- 
id^ce of God, may be called as pastor to any Baptist church. Hence all 
Baptist churches have a common interest in all ministers. If at any time 
a minister may be called by a church as pastor, such church has a right to 
know of his spiritual fitness and to inquire of the opinions he entertains of 
the doctrine and polity of the churches. Every church is inseparately con- 
nected with the whole denomination, in which there must be a oneness of 
faith and practice, as the end of the institution of the churches is the peace 
and security of the whole ; and whosoever has a right to the end has a right 
to the means. All churches being thus interested in the ordination of a 
minister, a presbytery or council consisting, customarily, of ministers of 
sister churches is convened, whose duty it is made to judge whether the 
doctrine and opinions of the candidate be Scriptural and in harmony with 
the faith of the church and denomination, so that there may be peace and 
concord among them all. For the actions of men proceed from their opin- 
ions, and in the government of opinions consist the well-governing of men's 
actions, in order to their peace and unity. For it cannot be denied that by 
and through the unskillful ness, or perversity of the ministry, false doctrines 
are often in time received. Without this right of inquiry into the private 
belief of those entering the ministry there Vf ould be no protection against 
errors. Hence the church has a right to judge, or constitute judges of 
opinions by these presbyteries as necessary to the peace and security of the 
churches. 

The imposition of the hands of a presbytery upon the minister to be or- 
dained was a most ancient public ceremony among the apostles, by which 
was designated and made certain the person ordained to the work of the 
ministry. They laid their hands on the candidates and prayed for them 
that they might receive the Holy Spirit, as a religious designation to the 
pastoral office. So the apostles prayed and laid their hands on the seven 
deacons in order to set them apart to that office. Paul advised Timothy 
to lay hand suddenly on no man ; that is, designate no man rashly to the 
office of a pastor. The use of this solemn ceremony was to designate and 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 393 

set apart the person whom the Roly Spirit had called and to whom the 
church had given authority to preach the gospel. Henco we learn that 
those elevated to this high ofSce were given, not only the right to preach the 
gospel, but also the right of exercising pastoral functions. It is reasonable 
therefore to conclude that a regularly ordained minister receives his author- 
ity to exercise pastoral functions not alone in Christ's right, but there must 
be an union of the divine and hnman call, and he may be discharged from 
that office when the church of which he is a member, for the good of the 
cause, shall think necessary, so they do it in all good conscience, of which 
the church must be the judge. 

All ordained ministers are equal in office and authority when called to the 
pastorate of a church, their functions being ministerial, and not magisterial. 
There is but one ministerial office in the church, that of pastor; besides this, 
we read in the New Testament of no other. For by the name of an evange- 
list is not signified an office, but several gifts by which the gospel is preached, 
where no churches are constituted, and by which men are made useful and 
profitable to the churches. But none of these gifts make an office in a 
church save only the due calling and election to the charge of guidance of 
the church by their doctrine and advice as pastors. The great office of a 
minister is to preach. This is evident by the great commission, Go into all 
the ivorld and preach the gospel to every creature. Preaching in the original 
is that act by which a cryer, or herald, used to do publicly in proclaiming a 
king. Now a herald has no right to command any man. Our Saviour tells 
his disciples, who sought priority and supremacy, that their office was to 
minister, even as the Son of Man came, not to he ministered unto, but to min- 
ister. To preach the gospel, is not meant thereby that men are bound after 
they believe and accept it to obey those in acts of government who preached 
that gospel. Hence by virtue of the office of a minister they have no power 
in and of themselves, much less has one minister a supremacy over another. 
Episcopacy is destitute of all apostolic sanction and authority, and we can 
safely assert that there is not a trace of it in the Scriptures. Neither the 
Acts nor the Epistles contain the slightest hint of any such priestly hierarchy 
being made before our Saviour's ascension, or any direct revelation to that 
eflTect subsequent to that event, binding on the churches. 

As my Father sent me, so I send you, said Christ to his apostles ; with 
humility, with meekness, without fortune, in poverty, with fullness of the 
Spirit and excellency of wisdom. The end was the preaching of the gospel, 
the redemption of man, the institution of the churches and the baptising of 
believers. This was the entire purpose and manner in which Christ was 
sent into the world by the Father. And since his apostles and their suc- 
cessors were to pursue the same ends and no other, they were furnished with 
the same power and no more. Christ gave them the Holy Spirit, and gave 
them commandment and power to. Teach all nations, and to baptise them, to 
administer the Supper, to exhort, to admonish, and to reprove. This is the 
sum of all the commissions and commandments they have from Christ. 

This power, and these commissions were wholly ministerial without 



394 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUBCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

domination, without proper jurisdiction, that is, without coercion ; it being 
wholly against the design of the gospel and the religion of tlie gospel, that it 
should be forced. And, therefore, one of the requisites of a minister is. He 
shall he no striker. He had no arms put into his hands for that purpose ; 
the ministerial state being furnished with authority, but no power, that is, an 
authority to persuade and to rebuke, but no power to command or to govern, 
as the word is used in the sense of secular dominion. Having only the care 
of souls, which cannot be governed by force, they are to govern as souls can 
only be governed, that is, by arguments and reason, by fear and by hope, by 
preaching of rewards and punishments, and by all the ways of the noblest 
government, that is, by wisdom and the ways of Christ. They are to look to 
the inward man. It is the church that rules the outward man. There are 
weak and feeble hands that hang down and starving souls that are to be 
strengthened ; which to do is the pastor's office. 

The jurisdiction of the ministry is ministerial and not magisterial. This 
appears in Paul's description of their office and power. To us is committed the 
word of reconciliation. We are not lords over the flock. Christ has set them 
over the household, not to rule with a rod, but to give them their meat in due 
season, to administer the food of God's word and ordinances to the members 
of the family. They have nothing of dominion and not anything except the 
ministry of service. Is it not honor enough to serve such a prince as Christ, 
to wait at such a table, to be a steward of such a family ? Christ says, He 
that is greatest among you let him he your minister. Obey them that have the rule 
over you, says Paul. Those over whom our pastors and elders have a rule 
are not domestics, they are not properly subjects. They have their obedience 
in their own power, the ministry is to feed and not to rule with a rod the 
churches of Christ ; that is, they are not to rule by empire, but by persuasion. 
If these rulers had a power of coercion, they could quickly make them 
willing and obedient. We heseech you, brethren, to admonish them that are 
unruly. That is, you must help us in our government, we are over you to 
admonish you, for we are over you not by empire, not by compulsion, not by 
laws, but by exhortation. It is a rule over the wills of men and not over 
their bodies. 

We cannot set up any precedents of government under the Jewish dis- 
pensation against this spiritual rule of the ministry. He who did not obey 
the word of the high priest was subjected to the severest penalties, for they 
had an actual jurisdiction given them by God. Theirs was a mixed govern- 
ment blending church and state, and the Jewish priesthood was a great and 
powerful establishment and included in it a rule, over things both human and 
divine, being judges of controversies, and by the law had power to inflict 
punishment upon criminals. Neither can we take as precedents all the acts 
of the apostles as patterns for us. Peter gave sentence of death against 
Ananias and Sapphira, as did Paul inflict blindness upon Ely mas the 
sorcerer; and even the lovable and beloved John threatened Diotrephes. 
But these were miracles and immediate divine judgments, and not acts of 
ordinary apostolic authority. It was a miraculous verification of their divine 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 395 

missiou seldom by them used. So did Paul threaten some delinquents in the 
church at Corinth, that if he did come, he vjould not spare them. But they 
had undervalued his ministry and looked for a sign and proof of Christ's 
authority on earth. These were all acts of divine power and cannot be 
imitated by ministers in this day, for it is not their work ; they are called 
into the ministry for other purposes and entrusted with other powers. 

AVhatever power Christ has entrusted to the ministry is but the image 
and similtudes of jurisdiction in their spiritual government over the churches. 
The soul cannot be subject to any jurisdiction but that of God. For juris- 
diction is the result of legislation, and is the power of hearing and deter- 
mining controversies between man and man ; which can belong to none but 
some organic body that has power to prescribe the rules of right and wrong, 
and the power to compel men to obey its decisions, which none can have 
but a local sovereign church. Now, none can give laws to souls but God ; 
he only is Lord of men's wills, and therefore none can give judgment or re. 
straint to souls but God. But as by preaching and teaching Christ's minis- 
ters imitate and supply the legislation of God, so by the power of the keys 
they imitate his jurisdiction. For it is to be observed that by and in the 
sermons preached in the gospels, those who preached them gave laws to the 
churches, that is, they declared the laws and will of God. For as the 
churches can make no laws of divine authority, of faith or manners, but 
what they have received from Christ and his apostles, so neither can minis- 
ters, who are but the under-shepherds of the churches, exercise any acts of 
government but the spiritual rule of Christ. 

Christ's ministers have no ruling power as derived and given to them as 
from the churches, but such as they have is given to them in the churches, 
and they are but the instruments made use of by the churches to do that 
which the churches cannot do as a body ; yet what they do is virtually done 
in and by the churches, the promise being made to them as a church. 
Neither are they the church's representatives as having a power absent and 
abstracted from the church. Nothing can be represented that is present, for 
the church is the seat or place of the minister's theatre of action where their 
rule is exercised, as the body is moved by its principal members. As, there- 
fore, the ruling power of a minister is in the name of Christ, so as to have 
the presence and prayers of the church to put force and efficacy into it. As 
in the ordination of a minister by a presbytery of ministers, it was always 
done in the local churches in the apostolic times by the apostles, with prayer 
and fasting, for these acts abstracted from the church have no efficacy in 
them, as when the body of the church, including both the church and pres- 
bytery, are joined together. This is reasonable, because Christ will have 
the assistance of the churches in their prayers, which have as much and infi- 
nitely more efficacy in them to prevail with him for a divine blessing as those 
of a body of ministers who might resolve themselves into a high court for 
that purpose. 

Now, in a Baptist church, if there be no rule there is no government. In 
fact, in all systems of government there are some traces of absolute power 



396 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUSCH JTJUISPRUDENCE ; 

to be found at their basis. In the obedience to government and law consists 
the fundamental principle of a church of Christ. In the absence of these 
principles no church government can be properly said to exist, but in the 
rule peculiar to the ministry, through the medium of their preaching and 
exhortation, it is a rule without power and dominion. When the keys were 
by the Saviour given to Peter, they were not given to rule the church, but 
to rule the kingdom of Heaven. And I will give unto thee the keys of the 
hingdom of Heaven. This is nothing more nor less than the power to 
preach, to teach, to exhort and to admonish. Now he that is preached to, 
exhorted and admonished, is not thereby bound to obey him who is thus 
authorized to speak. It being a doctrinal precept, it has in it no other em- 
pire, but that it is a commanding in the name of God. To command in 
the name of God implies an institution, an institution being but a setting up 
of something with a promise ; it has a blessing in it beyond the efficacy of 
the thing itself. While Christ has given his ministers no power over those 
to W'hom they preach, yet if they "will not give heed to the ministry, Christ, 
who gave them the keys or authority, thus to speak, in his name, has a juris- 
diction and power over them. This is as far as the ministerial power ex- 
tends, this is their jurisdiction and the limits of their coercion. Their power 
and authority, therefore, must be grounded aJone on the consent" of the 
church and their willingness to obey them. 

Whatever power is given to or assumed by ministers beyond this is magis- 
terial and not ministerial. Whenever a company of ministers bind them- 
selves together to do acts of government they thereby resolve themselves 
into a court of magistrates to take into their hands carnal weapons. Paul 
says. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, hut mighty through God 
to the pulling doivn of strongholds. For though I should boast somewhat more 
of our authority f which the Lord hath given us for our edification. All matters 
of church government having been committed to the church by divine ap- 
pointment cannot be transferred to others. We cannot transfer ecclesiasti- 
cal power to the ministry even, and say that it is after all but the power of 
the church committed to them. We should remember that these matters are 
all divine creations and appointments. If this divine order be destroyed, 
Vv'hatever may be the kind of government set up by men in its stead, is but 
a human creation and has no divine efficacy in, nor beyond it, and is no less 
than treason against the commonwealth of Christ. 

It is not strange then that our Baptist ministry has always been consid- 
ered so commonplace and so wanting in show and ostentation, inheriting no 
reverence which is not born of humility, and made holy by no religion not 
born from above. Such an institution, far from being so august as to spread 
reverence around it, is too lowly and inartificial to get reverence for itself. 
In a denomination where people do not care for outward show, where the 
genius of the people is untheatrical, they regard the substance of things, and 
all this outward pomp and splendor is trifling. As no such things were seen 
in the days of the apostles— among God's first ministers — no such thing is 
now seen among the true niinisters of this day. A church filled with 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 397 

unostentatious ministers does not care at all how the externals of religious 
life is managed. He who does not care about the circus is not concerned 
about the showman. An humble circuit rider, an able village preacher 
preaches the gospel twenty long years and is nobody ; he is made bishop, and 
before he is " consecrated " he all of a sudden becomes somebody. The 
bishop is made the head and front of the church, of all intercourse and all 
religious life ; everybody pays allegiance and reverence to the bishop, and 
everybody ranges themselves round the bishop. The idea that the bishop is 
not only at the head of the government, but is the government itself, is so 
fixed in the ideas of the adherents to this system that only the well-informed 
regard it as unscriptural and anti-apostolical, thou'j:h when the matter is ex- 
amined in the light of God's word, that conclusion is certain and even obvi- 
ous. The church of Christ does not naturally need an earthly head at all. 
Its constitution, if left to itself, is not monarchical nor aristocratical, but 
purely democratical. 

Much of the distortion of ministerial power and primitive church govern- 
ment may be attributed to the error that the Jewish economy is a pattern or 
rule for modeling of the church of Christ under the gospel dispensation. 
But when we come to set up Christ's churches all the measures of good and 
evil must be taken upon evangelical lines. Nothing is to be conformed to 
the Jewish economy except where the resemblance is warranted by the like- 
ness itself. Nothing is to be condemned which the apostles permit, and 
nothing is to be permitted which they condemn. For this is the great pre- 
rogative, perfection and superiority of the apostolic church above that of 
Moses. Some things by Moses were permitted for necessity, and because of 
the hardness of their hearts. But when Christ came he abrogated the old 
and gave perfect laws and still more perfect graces. Under the old law the 
priestly office was inherited. Men were set apart, and by tribal relations 
came to fill these offices by a prerogative from God himself. Not so now. 
Every man whom the Tloly Spirit calls and the church elects and ordains is 
a high priest before God, and sufficient for the work whereunto he has been 
called. The models of the Jewish synagogues are not a competent pattern 
for our imitation, and not everything done in the Old Testament is a war- 
rant for us in church government. No wonder that those who have derived 
their warranties of ministerial authority from the examples of the Jewish 
economy, in the Old Testament, have gone so far astray. Things done in 
the Old Testament, though by the command of God, do not warrant us, or 
become justifiable precedents in church government without such an express 
command as they had. If the command to them was special, limited and 
personal, the obedience was just as limited, and certainly could not pass 
down to us and become obligatory under the gospel dispensation. It is a 
well-known rule of interpretation among lawyers that when a law is changed 
the examples which acted in proportion to that law, lose all manner of 
influence and cannot produce a just imitation, and are, therefore, not binding. 

While there are many things that the Jews were commanded to do which 
are now obligatory upon us as Christians, yet there are many things which 



898 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

•were rules and laws to them, which are not so to us. But Paul in his letter 
to the Hebrews says : For the priesthood being changed, there is made of 
necessity a change of law; for that after the similitude of Melchisedec there 
ariseih another priest, who is not made after the law of a carnal commandment. 
This old priesthood being changed there is a necessity of a change of the 
law, and so of the law of government which depends uj)on Christ's priestly 
office Having a new high priest over the house of God we have a new 
order in this house. So then the old law which depends upon Moses's 
regulations was changed, and a new law and a new order of things is to 
come in the room of it ; and therefore in the same letter the apostle calls it 
the reformation. 

The Jewish form of government is called the elements of the world ; and 
therefore the apostle bids us under the gospel, not to be conformed neither in 
worship nor government to the elements of the world. So in Galatians he 
says, they were under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the 
Father. The gospel being a more spiritual reign, the frame of government 
and the institutions of it are not conformed to the worldly way of govern- 
ments like that of nations and of kingdoms, as that was then, to an outward 
carnal glory, as their worship also was. As God had chosen the preaching 
of the word which is said to be foolishness, so he has chosen many of those 
things which are in the eyes of many considered a common, contemptible 
and a foolish form of government, in comparison of what was then. And 
this is what confounds and deceives the world, that Christ should come and 
set up simple, plain little local churches all over the world with no show, no 
ostentation, no glory, and no great overgrown top-heavy and distorted power. 
For the gospel is a mystery throughout and will continue so to be to the end 
of the world. 

The Jewish economy was wholly civil, or it was a part of their religion. 
If it was wholly civil it went away with that commonwealth to whom it was 
given ; if it was part of the religion, it passed away with the temple, with 
the priesthood, with the covenant of works, with the revelation and reign of 
Christ ; and though it might be a good guide in framing a commonwealth, 
yet in church government it is wholly without obligation. It is a great 
mistake to suppose that all the rites of Moses' law were types and figures of 
something in the Christian dispensation, and that some mystery of ours must 
correspond to some rite of theirs. 

Christ would have his ministers labor not as natural agents do in imita- 
tion of the priesthood and priestcraft because his promise to accompany 
their ministry is in a liberty not circumscribed by carnal things as under 
the Jewish dispensation. The great commission to preach the gospel should 
not be mixed and mingled with the secular government of the universal 
church, but should be left wl>ere Christ has placed it by special institution. 
The supernatural administration of preaching is limited to the ministry as 
the government of the churches is limited to the churches themselves ; as 
the power is from Christ, so in whom each of these powers should be, is also 
from Christ, and is by his appointment. The local churches are the vice- 



OK, THE COMMOX LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 399 

gerents of Christ on earth, and if their government be consigned to other 
hands than Christ has appointed, and by institution placed it, surely that 
government is overthrown and his churches, as such, destroyed. And 
though ministers are by Christ's appointment, yet he has not promised to 
bless and be with them in their administration of the things for which he 
ordained them, if they assume a power that they have not, no more so than 
the judge who would assume a jurisdiction the law gives him not. To teach 
and to preach is the exercise of a gift for edification, and they whom Christ 
and the churches have put into the ministry to preach and feed the flock, 
may perform all that ministers can do with their gifts, but the act of govern- 
ment of the churches is an act of divine authority, which Christ has 
not committed to them, and is a nullity, for want of commission in those 
who do it. 

Though ministers have no formal power abstractly from the church, yet 
they contribute their share of authority as officers of the churches, and have 
a virtual power as such from the presence of the church, in respect to the 
execution of their office, especially in such acts as by their calling and min- 
istry they do for the church, which concerns the church as acts of jurisdic- 
tion. Yet in all ministerial acts of jurisdiction that belong to a church, as 
an organic body, they have a virtual rule from the presence and concurrence 
of the church, doing all this by their authority, and in their presence. Even 
our Catholic friends who have gone so far astray, seem to acknowledge this 
principle. When the pope speaks infallibly, as a pope, he must not be alone, 
but in the Cathedra, in the chair, surrounded by his cardinals. Now under 
the apostolic form of church government, though it were admitted that all 
power to rule was committed to the ministry, yet not as abstracted from 
the presence of the church. No act of the High Priest was lawful in sacred 
things, if done outside the Temple. Christ has now chosen a better temple 
for ministers to exercise their jurisdiction, in temples not made with hands, 
living stones, that is, churches consisting of living souls, from the presence 
and concurrence of whose prayers and assistance the acts done by ministers 
in the churches receive their strength. 

But our Presbyterian brethren deduce much of their system from the 
mention of elders and ruling elders in the Scripture. Therefore let us 
examine what is truly meant by the use of these terms so often mentioned 
in connection wdth the churches. These brethren contend that while these 
first and primary institutions, the churches, were thus planted, yet the keys 
of the churches were given to the officers, and not to them and to the mem- 
bership of a local church jointly. They contend that when Paul said to 
Titus, That thou shouldst ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee, 
he meant ruling elders, and not pastors in a local church. 

It is a well-known rule, in the interpretation of the Scriptures, that an 
inference drawn from the Scriptures must evidently and apparently be con- 
tained in the law before it can be extracted out of it, otherwise it cannot be 
intended by the law-giver. Whatsoever is not in the letter of the law, and 
whatever we do not have a divine authority for in matters of church polity, 



400 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JTTEISPRUDENCE ; 

when it is not drawn from thence by a prime and immediate consequence, 
but in which there is a violence or artificial chains of speculations, or the 
devices of the wit and ingenuity of man, we are wholly to reject as the 
teaching for doctrine the traditions of men. For inferences and laws, drawn 
from tne Scriptures, ought to be few, and that people in the world, that 
multiplies them without apparent necessity and clear proofs of intendment, 
lays simres and nets for their own feet. The Scriptures warrant us to go no 
further than in sight of them. If we go one step from the words of the 
text we are within the call of its voice, and our obedience can well be 
exacted when it can be well proved. But if we go beyond the letter of the 
law, there are so many intrigues of fancy in the disputer, and so many sin- 
ister motives in the hearer, that we will thereby be apt to strain a point to 
round out a theory, and will be led astray and lose sight of the law and our 
reverence therefor. Logic and fancy are but ill law-givers in matters of 
church government. 

Obey them that have the rule over you, is a plain commandment, but if we 
infer therefrom that our ministers have a complete power and rule over us, 
and that we are to obey them in all they do and say, we deny the authority 
of the church in matters of government, and deny our own reason. Cer- 
tainly this follows not because we are commanded to obey them only in such 
things where they ought to rule over us, but it does not mean that they are 
thereby invested with ecclesiastical power in matters over which the church 
alone is ruler. Those pastors whom Christ has sent, and the church has 
called, are our spiritual and authorized guides ; they have power to teach 
and to exhort, they are to administer the ordinances and to do anything that 
can inform us and invite us to do good ; and we must follow them in all 
ways that lead us to God, and what they do and teach we are to obey and 
believe, until wc have reason to do and believe to the contrary ; because the 
Scriptures neither say or mean anything beyond these measures. 

Now, in order to ascertain the true limits and functions of the power of 
the ministry over the churches, we are to deal with the subject not as it 
ought to be, but as it really is in the Scriptures. Our aim should be to 
make clear, by discussion and definitions, what we find there recorded, and 
allow no speculation, but reject all theories that are not borne out either 
by a thus said, or a thus did the Lord. Our primary duty should be to 
apply the law as it is, not to make it what we think it ought to be, and the 
more conscientiously and skillfully we fulfill our duty, the more will our 
power of determining the true status of ministerial power be limited to the 
principles laid down in the New Testament already determined for us. 

Ministerial power of ruling in the widest sense in which we are here con- 
cerned with its definition, is, in the sense of the Scriptures, exercised by the 
ministry whose teachings and counsels are habitually carried out by the 
churches of which they are pastors ; and in case these ministers are preach- 
ing evangelists their directions are obeyed by those to whom they preach. 
Now ecclesiastical power is quite a different thing but nevertheless it is 
clearly a species of this kind of rule. Thus a leading educator of the young 



OK, THE COMMOX LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 401 

may be said to exercise power wlien his recommendation to buy and read 
certain books is widely carried out by his pupils, and other cultivated mem- 
bers of his community, but he cannot be said to exercise political power ; 
and this is not because education and literary taste has not its influence 
upon political government. If some contagious disease were prevalent in a 
neighborhood and a physician's direction to parents in general to observe 
some sanitary regulation were widely obeyed from a general confidence in 
his medical skill, he might be said to exercise power, but it still would not 
be considered political power ; though if the legislature issued the same 
orders, and obtained similar obedience, it would be exercising political 
power for the legislature would have power to enforce obedience by 
physical violence. In other words, he who is said to exercise power proper 
must be in a condition that if his direction be not obeyed, the requisite 
amount of force must be at hand to compel obedience. And if by such 
means a minister induces his church to act in conformity to his ministerial 
dictation, we must agree that he exercises power, ecclesiastical in its effects, 
if not in its nature. And, generally, if a church, otherwise clearly supreme, 
habitually conforms to the direction of its pastor from the love and venera- 
tion it has for liim, it seems clear that the ultimate power of produing eccle- 
siastical effects has temporarily passed from the church to the pastor. At 
the same time I do not think that we should affirm a transfer of sovereignty 
from the church to the pastor, and it would not prevent the church from 
exercising supreme power unimpaired, if it made up its mind so to do. 
Beyond this, no minister has any power in the government of a church. 
Beyond this, the apostles themselves never exercised ecclesiastical authority 
over the church. And beyond this it is certain Christ himself, the great 
founder and Prime Minister of Christianity, never ventured ; thus leaving his 
disciples and churches to govern themselves as best suited their own ideas of 
propriety. 

In the exercise of church government physical force has no place, but 
there must be a corresponding authority placed somewhere to enforce 
obedience to such regulations as come under the province of church govern- 
ment. Now, there is a sense in which the ministry may be said to have a 
ruling power over the churches. Their power may be said to be that of the 
schoolmaster with no rod in his hand to punish. In case there was placed 
in the hands of the ministry a power to rule and govern the churches, inde- 
pendently of the aid and assistance of the membership, this would be illegal 
and unscriptural and anti-ecclesiastical. If the influence and counsel belong- 
ing properly to the ministry were to be backed by the membership of a church 
regardless of the share that belongs to them in ruling to the extent as the 
directions of a political government, we would recognize that the power 
belonging to ecclesiastical government had been transferred to the ministry 
in an unscriptural way. Hence in considering where the supreme ecclesias- 
tical power resides in a church that is based upon the apostolic models, we 
must assume that no other person's commands and rule can be obeyed from 
fear of being disciplined for disobedience, except those issued by or under 
26 



402 - A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJIICH JUEISPRUDENCE ; 

the authority of the local church. In other words, such rule as the ministry 
has the right to exercise over the churches must take effect through the 
church as the basis of all government. 

The ruling authority of the ministry over their churches may be more 
properly termed influence than power, strictly so called, that is exercised. 
Hence, strictly speaking, it is inaccurate to say that the ministry, in them- 
selves have any ruling power over the churches. While they can, by moral 
influences, by the use of all the methods of persuasion which bind the con- 
sciences of men, influence their churches over which they are pastors to carry 
out their wishes, yet, so long as there are no penalties, other than social or 
moral ones, attached to a refusal to obey them, it cannot be correctly 
asserted that any ecclesiastical power to rule resides with them. Suppose 
that a church habitually obeys its pastor, not from fear of discipline 
threatened by the latter, nor from admonitions given, but from the reverence 
and respect they have for him, and from the love they bear him as their 
spiritual guide, we must say that even then he cannot be said to exercise 
ecclesiastical power. But if their influence over their churches were so 
strong that the majority would unquestionably obey their directions, it would 
hardly be denied that they, as ministers, had a ruling power, and nominally 
they were, in spiritual matters at least, the ruliug spirits in the .churches. 
They thus have the ability to influence, without that of compelling. But 
the two swords, the secular and spiritual, cannot be wielded in, and by the 
same hand. The one is incompatible with the other. The spiritual rule 
belongs to the ministry, while ecclesiastical government belongs solely to the 
local church. There Christ has placed them both ; the one is heavenly, the 
other earthly ; the one is divine, the other is secular, and in this order they 
must ever remain. 

Now it is especially the duty of a minister, in the way herein pointed out, 
to rule the church by their wise and prudent counsel, by their watching over 
men's lives in their orderly walk and conversation. To rule over the out- 
ward man, to amend and correct their infirmities is their duty, as likewise 
they should have a care over the inward man principally to guide them 
spiritually, to correct their errors, to remove their temptations, to allay their 
doubts and scruples, and to pluck up such heresies and other poisonous 
Aveeds as are contrary to sound doctrine. As a good and faithful shepherd 
leads his sheep whithersoever he would have them go, so the wise and pious 
pastor has power given him from above to lead his flock into green pastures, 
and into all the paths of righteousness and peace. 

Paul in his first letter to Timothy, his son in the faith, says : Let the elders 
that rule well, he counted worthy of double honor, especially they who labor in 
the luord and doctrine. Now, he did not say that they were to be accounted 
worthy of double honor because they were good rulers over the church, a 
sjmod, a conference or a bishopric, but because they labored well in w^ord 
and doctrine. It is evident, therefore, that their principal oflice and work is 
to attend to the ministry of the word, although by virtue of their calling they 
Jiave much else to do as becometh good stewards of the household of God. 



OR, THE C0MM02T LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 403 

As, to open and shut the doors of the church of Christ, by admission and 
dismission of members, by ordination of other ministers and deacons, to see 
that none do not live in the church without exercising their respective gifts 
and callings, to prevent and heal offences, whether in life or doctrine, that 
might corrupt their own churches, or other churches also, if their counsel be 
required ; to prepare matters of business for the churches' consideration, and 
to moderate their deliberations, and see that order and decorum is observed, 
as it is also his office to visit and pray with the sick of his church. 

There is a corresponding ruling power that belongs to evangelists who 
have not the charge of churches. These are ministers to whom Christ in 
his time, and the churches since his ascension, gives power to preach the 
gospel in all parts of the world, to whom it was given to be evangelists. The 
Christianity of Christ, in the beginning, was mainly evangelical and has 
remained so to this day. The heralds of the cross go hither and thither to 
preach, but like pastors the credentials they carry are from the churches, 
and like them they are ministers ; ministers, in that they do it not by their 
own authority and calling, but by that of the church of which they are mem- 
hers. They are the shepherds over the scattered members of the flock. 
They are scattered members who have become loosened and cut off ona from 
another while they remain non-affiliated "with the church. The office of an 
evangelist is to preach the gospel and bring all these scattered members into 
the right place in the body of Christ. They are such as Christ has chosen 
before the foundation of the world to be saints. They are called Christ's 
sheep : And other sheep I have ivhich are not of this fold ; sheep not yet 
brought into the fold. I have much people in this city, yet to he called. These 
evangelists are appointed by Christ to be in their ministry the means of con- 
verting men, and to gather them into one body, and to set each elect saint 
in his right seat in the body. It is called adding to the church such as are 
saved, as Peter did on the day of Pentecost. 

Hence no one can deny but that the work of an evangelist is a great work 
of rule, for it is but the means of setting up and organizing church govern- 
ments on earth, but not to rule them afterwards by any divine or human 
right inherent in themselves as ministers of the churches. They preach as 
ministers, and Christ looks upon them as men set apart to the spread of the 
gospel, and he accompanies them with the blessing of a minister, and makes 
use of them rather than others to turn men to God more generally and more 
frequently. And though they have not the obligation of watching, or power 
of censure and admonition, yet they have the power to preach and to gather 
men into organic bodies to be instituted into churches after the custom of 
the denomination, Paul as an apostle, had not the power of censure over 
those that were without the church. What have I to do to judge them that 
are without f Yet to preach to them as an apostle he had the power. We 
cannot say that they are ministers in preaching to other congregations that 
hear them, that, therefore, they may in and of themselves erect a power of 
government over many churches, to lord It over Christ's heritage. As an 
evangelist he has power to rebuke and to admonish, and if any hear him not 



404 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPIIUDENCE ; 

then it is liis duty as God's embassador to induce the church to exclude and 
cut them off that by regeneration and a good life are not of the flock. They 
have nothing to do to judge those that are without the church, but those 
that are joined to the church by covenant only. They dare not administer 
any ordinance of Christ to such as offer not themselves to enter into cove- 
nant v.ith the church. Neither must he obtrude himself upon any church ; 
if they call him not to be their minister he may not dispense any censure or 
act of power over them. Ministers have no power as ministers but when 
they are called as such, and they are not to be called but where there are a 
willing people who want to hear them. They are ministers and servants of 
the church : We preach ourselves your servants. Not by any means are they 
called ruling elders. They come to the churches' call. Come into Macedonia 
and help us. Hence Christ has ordained the church to call her own officers, 
for when called they come in the churches' name, they go upon the churches' 
errand. It is our Saviour's rule, Se that is sent is 7iot greater than he that 
sends. So then herein lies their service, they come when the church calls 
them and go when the church sends them. Paul himself says he was sent 
by the church, and the church chose another to go with him. This is the 
duty and service of the ministers of the church. 

Now, the word elder as used in the Scriptures is synonymous' with the 
term pastor, as understood by Baptists. It may be defined to be a person 
who, on account of his calling and age, performs the functions of a ruler ; 
hence any pastor, or minister, who belongs to a church occupying any posi- 
tion appropriate to such as have age, experience and dignity is an elder, as 
the elders of Israel, the elders of the Synagogue, or the elders of the apos- 
tolic churches. In Baptist churches all ministers are elders, and when 
specially authorized by the churches, when assembled to examine and ordain 
a man to the ministry, they are called presbyters or a presbytery. 

The church, whereof the pastor, and other ministers, may be a part, is an 
organic body to which they belong united together in one particular em- 
ployment, which no other society is competent to do. A natural body con- 
sists in a variety of members, and every member has its particular use. If 
the ivhole body were an eye, where were the hearing f There is no living body 
but consists of a variety of members ; so it is with the church, the members 
have several offices, and every member has his different gifts, and by the use 
of these several members with their several gifts they are able to rule a 
church and administer spiritual things as well as government and discipline 
to the whole church. Christ is the head of it, and is above all the members 
in place and joower. As the body receives from the head motion and rea- 
son, so have we all our spiritual life and motion from Christ as our head. 
As the head guides the body at its will, and the body is ready at its com- 
mand, so every member of the body of Christ's church is ready to move at 
his appointment and command. As the church in the Scriptures is so often 
compared to a body, there must be some distinction, as much as there is a 
distinction in the natural body. An hundred hands will not make a body, 
therefore it takes a membership, a pastor and other Scriptural officers to 
make a perfect church. 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 405 

« 

Now, in the twelfth chapter of his letter to the Romans, Paul speaks of sev- 
eral kinds of members of the church, and among them he mentions, He that 
ruleth, and says that he should do so luith diligence. What kind of rule is 
this ? To answer this question, it is necessary to say that it is often declared 
in the Scriptures that the kingdom of Christ is not of this world, but his is 
a spiritual reign and rule ; from which it follows that the rule commanded 
here to a ruling elder is not a worldly rule, nor one such as will enable him 
to do any act of governmeut in a church. As Christ's kingdom is not of 
this world, but embraces the whole invisible, universal church, both on earth 
and in Heaven, the rule of it is not a worldly rule, because it never did 
meet, and never can meet, as an organic body, and he who would rule or at- 
tempt to rule it, must make use of a spiritual rule likened unto the king- 
dom in which he is called to rule. It is needless to say that it is not an 
organic body, as his visible church on earth is, and all ministers of whatever 
degree or calliug are rulers therein, and are called to be ruling elders therein 
by their preaching, teaching, admonitions and counsel, but they carry no 
ecclesiastical power in their hands or offices. 

So we see here ground laid for the power and duty of a ruling elder, 
whether he be a pastor or other minister of the gospel ; it is neither after a 
worldly manner, nor does he rule with any authority, as a ruler with power, 
to carry out and enforce his teachings, not by the sword, except the sword 
of the Spirit : they are to teach whatsoever Christ has commanded them, not 
only as pastors, but as evangelists everywhere, and whenever occasion pre- 
sents itself. Now, there is an empire and rule in preaching and teaching, 
for he who would pretend to teach men would thereby pretend to govern 
them. What kind of rule is this? Is it not a ministerial rule, dispensing 
the will of Christ ? It is then to attend to the ministry of the word. This 
kind of a rule is the work commended to the pastors, evangelists and teach- 
ers, as Christ has given them their several gifts. These things speak and ex- 
hort and rebuke with all authoriiy. It is by speaking and exhorting that 
they are to rule, not only their churches, but it is by this same means they 
are to rule those to whom they speak, and those whom they exhort. If a 
wise and discreet pastor pursuades his flock to follow his advice and preach- 
ing, he certainly thereby becomes their ruler as effectively as if Christ had 
given him the power directly to rule, and in thus ruling he becomes, in the 
sense of the Scriptures, a ruling elder. If, therefore, we would inquire what 
the duties of a ruling elder are, we answer that whatever Christ has not 
committed immediately to a pastor, as the shepherd of the flock, he has 
committed to ruling elders by reason of their calling — that is, to preach as 
an assistant pastor, if called by the church so to do, to evangelize, to exhort 
and to rebuke — all of which he may and ought to do, though he have no 
connection with the church as an under-shepherd, and, in so doing, thereby 
becomes a ruling elder. 

A gospel minister, or elder, is a bishop of a local church, who acts not by 
any inherent authority in himself, but whatever he does he acts under the 
authority of the church. The word minister, in its broader meanino-, in- 



406 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

eludes all ordained preachers of the gospel, such as evangelists and mission- 
aries. Of the original ministers of the Christian religion, the apostles were 
the first, of which there were in the beginning but twelve, chosen and con- 
stituted by Christ himself. Their office was not only to preach, teach, to 
baptise, to institute churches under Christ's immediate teaching, but also to 
be witnesses of our Saviour's ministry and resurrection. This power Christ 
had himself, and gave the same to his apostles, and though they were made 
apostles immediately by Christ, without any relation to a particular church, 
yet we learn from the first chapter of the Acts that Matthias was numbered 
among the apostles by the choice of the church. And Paul and Barnabas, 
though made apostles immediately by Christ, yet received their ordination 
in the local church at Antioch. They did not set up a high court, unto 
which churches were to come to ordain ruling and presiding elders, but they 
rather came themselves, and visited churches, and ordained elders in every 
church with fasting and prayer in the churches, and in and of themselves 
they exercised no power of jurisdiction, though by their preaching and 
advice directed the churches so to do. And if there might be cases wherein 
the apostles, as ruling elders, did excommunicate alone, yet they were very 
extraordinary, and these cases can in no way be imitated by us, as their 
miracles are not. As, therefore, the apostles did not set up an hierarchy in 
themselves, or a court, out of particular presbyteries, so presbyteries are not 
to set up a high court of particular churches. 

Now, from the examples laid down in the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit first 
designates a man for the ministry, the church, of which he is a member, 
calls him, and then it is left for a presbytery of elders, under the supervision 
of the church, to ordain him to the full work of the ministry, by the laying 
on of the hands of the presbytery, which by representation is the hands of 
the church. And it is the duty of the ministry to watch over their minis- 
terial brethren, and that the churches be not scandalized with notoriously 
corrupt ministers, and in that sense they are guides and rulers in the denom- 
ination. John the Re velator writing to the angel, or pastor of the church 
at Ephesus, says in the second chapter, twelfth verse. But I have a few things 
against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam. 
There he reproves the pastors of the churches for tolerating a doctrine con- 
trary to the Christian religion, thus holding them responsible for suffering the 
churches to allow such things. 

That these elders and apostles even in the very first churches had no 
actual ruling authority over the churches, is evident from the fact that when 
the church at Antioch was troubled about the necessity of circumcision, to 
salvation, they could not be satisfied, but sent to the church at Jerusalem, 
and to the apostles and elders there, and they met with the church assembly, 
and there debated the question among them. If they had divine authority 
to order and rule them, what need was there of disputation ? The word of 
one apostle would have settled the whole controversy, but they send to the 
church, and it is an example and precedent for other churches, and there- 
fore, in that the elders are named, it is their care and duty to look to such 



OB, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 407 

errors as arise in other churches, if they, as in this case, be required, and in 
like manner it is also their duty according to the rule of Christ to go to 
other churches to deliver their opinions when asked so to do. Such is the 
care of elders, and one church over another, they ought to do, by their 
advice and good counsel, what they can for the repressing of errors among 
them, and send chosen men, or elders unto the churches, as to answer by 
word of mouth, what has been agreed upon as to doctrine. It is, therefore, 
the care of elders, or ministers, who are officers in churches, to be ready to 
help other churches, by their advice and counsel, if they require them ; and 
if they do not require them, yet by all means, to do what they can to help 
them, and reform what is amiss amongst them. And in so doing they 
become ruling elders, and nothing more, according to the apostolic teachings 
and examples. 

It might be said that the office, as above described, of ruling elders is 
visionary, and that if Christ has given such ministers to the churches, and 
to the denomination, he would have set limits to their duties and powers. He 
who has no kingdom on earth, or that which is equivalent hereto, has no 
coercive power. Christ said : As my Father sent me, so I send you. He was 
sent to establish and proclaim the gospel of peace on earth and goodwill to 
men, and not to reign in majesty and power ; by all of which compulsion is 
excluded, their mission being exhortation and evangelization. It was the 
power of the keys given not to Peter alone, but to all ministers alike, to open 
and shut the doors to God's house, and to keep its worship and doctrine 
pure. This is such a rule as is no small help to those who labor in doctrin^. 
and discipline, and no small help to the whole church of Christ, which, if we 
were to do away with, many evils and much confusion would spring up and 
grow without possibility of redress. As Christ rules in the hearts of his 
followers, and thus sways the church of the living God without compulsion, 
so do his fninisters rule and guide his churches by the power of the sword of 
the Spirit alone. It is true that whatever is an act of rule in the church, 
they must have a hand in it, but the whole church must join with them. 
From which it will follow that the rule of the ministry is not a worldly rule, 
not with state and pomp, but a rule that is spiritual. As Christ's kingdom 
is not of this world, so is neither the rule of his ministry. For as my Father 
sent me, so I send you. 

This was the primitive way of estimating the power of the ministry, and 
it is still the Scriptural way of doing it ; and Baptists are the only people in 
the world who have, since those primitive times, practiced it in strict imita- 
tion of these examples, and if they have in anything departed from the 
teachings and precepts of the apostles, they desire now to amend anything 
they may have practiced amiss. The Apostle Paul, the great spiritual ruler, 
in the planting and training of these early churches, left Titus not an 
apostle, but an evangelist, not a bishop, but an ordinary minister, whose 
proper office it was, as appears from his epistle, to ordain elders in every 
city, where any sufficient number of believers were to make a church, and 
when suitable men for ministers might be found for the churches as pastors. 



408 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

Luke, in Acts, calls it ordaining elders in every church, while Paul calls it 
ordainiiig elders in every city, and the one interprets the other. And Paul's 
practice, in these instances, is here turned into a divine command or direc- 
tion as given to Titus, which, therefore, as it bound him, will bind Baptists 
and all others loyal to the truth, to the end of the world. Now no 
man is so simple as to say that elders were to be ordained in these cities, 
as it was a city, or body politic of men ; for elders and churches are relative 
terms, as shepherd and ilock, and therefore these officers were not ordained 
but to local churches ; but to say that he ordained elders in the city, neces- 
sarily pre-supposes a church extant in that city in which these ministers 
were ordained ; and, therefore, the ordination was in such cities only where 
a church was, and a competent number of believers to make a church. 
And it is reasonable to believe this was the cause why Paul did not cast and 
mould these people, who became believers in Crete, into churches with pas- 
tors as they became believers. And he being called away, left Titus behind 
him to mould these believers into churches at fit and proper times. 

Those who try to bolster up the episcopal form of church government use 
the fifth verse of this first chapter of Paul's letter to Titus, where he uses this 
language. And ordain elders in every city as I had appointed thee. Not hav- 
ing any examples in the New Testament of where any one of the apostles 
ever acted as a bishop over many churches, and not having any other or 
better evidence, they make use of this place to show that, in the apostolic 
times, they planted churches only in cities. So that they make the episco- 
pacy, or the apostolic institution, to depend upon the heaping together of all 
the believers and people in a city and the villages about it, and to make out 
of this conglomerated mass what they are pleased to call a bishopric or dio- 
cesan form of government, and hence it became necessary to have a big 
elder, larger and grander than the rest, to rule over them ; and that Titus 
himself was the first bishop, because Paul said. As I apjyoiiited thee ; that 
is to say, over these cities and the churches therein ; and therefore he, as one 
man, was a bishop appointed for that purpose. And, likewise, our Presby- 
terian friends make use of this same place to prove the Presbyterian form of 
church government, and that all churches in a city, when multiplied, were 
by apostolic institution to be one church, for government, as well as at first, 
when they were but one congregation ; and that all these smaller pastors 
were still to continue to be under-shepherds. Now, in all candor, is not this 
a strained construction, and does it not do great violence to the Scripture 
accounts of these churches taken together ? 

For this appointment was given to Titus, in the first beginniug of the 
gospel in Crete, for Paul having just been there with him, and having con- 
verted many in the island, he left Titus behind, to ordain them elders. So 
we see that here was the first erection of churches, and the election of 
pastors in them by the churches ; and, therefore, it was in the beginning of 
the gospel, at which time all the believers in each city were but as many as 
might make but one church. And certainly it was the duty of these Chris- 
tians, that all those living together should join in one church, rather than in 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 409 

divers churclies for worship, support and the edification, one of another, for 
the sake of unity and strength. And certainly they did and ought to 
remain one church, and continue one, till absolute necessity would cause a 
division into many. Because in the times when Titus was there, in fact, 
there were doubtless so many in these cities, as would make but one church. 
And when the word city is used it is not meant literally the extent of the 
whole city, but it is put metaphorically for the church, then extant in any 
city, and does not mean the extent and jurisdiction of church government ; 
and they were not to be elders to that city, and the surrounding churches, if 
there were any, but to the churches in that city, if there should be more than 
one. So that now, in this day, in the isle of Crete, according to Episcopalians, 
doubtless there is a pretended bishop there who comes down to us by succes- 
sion from Titus, by the laying on of the holy digits, not by authority of the 
local churches, as Paul, Barnabas, Matthias and Titus himself were set apart 
to the work of the ministry, but of bishops. In other words, it is bishops 
making bishops, and giving them power to rule and govern the churches — 
not to do as Titus was appointed to do, that is, to organize the churches, and 
to help them select pastors — ^but to organize these scattered churches into 
one church and to rule over them. 

He is not the ruler of the churches who assumes to appropriate to him- 
self the title of pope, bishop or ruling elder, or is set up to be one by a 
college of these ecclesiastics ; but he is a true minister of the gospel, who was 
made one, after the examples in which Paul, Barnabas, Matthias and Titus 
were made such. The Scriptures are a nullity if ministers and rulers of the 
churches could be made without a gospel law, or an apostolic example, and 
the intervention and authority of the churches useless, if a body of ministers 
defado could have given authority to their own acts independently of the 
churches. But if these pseudo-high-churchmen could make him to be a 
minister and a ruler, who were not made so by the laws of the gospel, and 
give force and efficacy to the acts of one who is, they must have a power of 
making a minister to be one who is not so ; that is to say, all depends 
entirely upon their authority. If any allow such to be ministers, who are 
not lawfully made, they must confess that power to be Scriptural which 
makes them so, when they have no right in themselves. The vanity of these 
whimsies will further appear, if it be considered that real ministers are 
ministers made such by the law of the gospel, and the ministerial examples 
therein set out for our guidance, and that ruHng elders, presiding elders, 
bishops and popes are such by overthrowing the laws of the gospel in such 
cases made and provided. It is not more ridiculous to set him above the 
law, who is what he is by the law, than to expect the observation of these 
laws, from one who by usurpation makes himself master of all, that he may 
be restrained by no law, and is what he is by subverting all law. Besides if 
the safety and stability of apostolic church government and the ministerial 
office be the supreme law of the gospel, and this safety and stability extends 
to, and consists in the preservation of the churches of Christ in their original 
integrity, that law must necessarily be the root and beginning, as well as 



410 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

the end and limit of all ministerial powers and all ecclesiastical laws must 
be fcubservient and subordinate thereto. Sometimes we see this love of power 
and of rule spring up in our free Baptist churches in a limited sense. If, 
then, this love of supremacy is seen in independent local churches, formed of 
men who have inherited powers of asserting their ecclesiastical independence, 
w^hat will be the supremacy of an aristocratic ministry in long-established 
bodies, in bodies which have grown vast and highly organized after the 
fashion of the nations of the earth, and in bodies which, instead of controlling 
a few people, control the whole religious state or nation ? 

In the primitive times of the churches, even during the very lives of the 
apostles, who were by Christ given all power over the churches, they never 
met as a college of bishops, nor as ministers claiming authority to call and 
ordain a minister in their own name and by their own authority. This 
power was left to the churches, and all ministers, so far as the record shows, 
were elected and ordained by them as Matthias, Paul and Barnabas were. 
There was, therefore, power in the churches to elect and make ministers 
before these the very first ministers were made such, or there never could 
have been any, for no apostle, or they as a body, ever made a minister, or 
claimed the right to make one. Matthias, Paul and Barnabas never could 
have been ministers had not the local churches of which they were members 
elected and ordained them, which they could not have done if they had not 
had the power of making them so. There were churches before there were 
ministers, barring the apostles who were not ministers in the sense here used. 
These churches, although they had been planted by the apostles, had a 
power, such a power as the apostles themselves never dared to assume ; for 
no number of men, banded together under a covenant, can be without 
authority ; nay, these churches had the power of making these ministers to 
be what they were, or they never could have been ministers. They could 
not be ministers by succession, for the Scriptures show them to have been 
the very first thus made by the call and ordination of the churches. There 
can be no continuance of succession when there was no beginning to succeed. 
They were not apostles by the choice and call of Christ as the twelve were, 
for they were made apostles by a higher power than by the churches. That 
which calls, and ordains, must be stronger than those called and ordained, 
and is prior to them both in point of time and authority. They had, there- 
fore, nothing but what the Holy Spirit and the church gave them ; their 
greatness and power must be from the local church that made them to be 
ministers of the gospel. Matthias was elected by the church. That he may 
take part of this ministry and apostleship. He certainly could have had no 
part in this ministry had not the church elected him to be a minister, and 
hence the laws and liberties of the church could not be from him or those 
like him, but the churches*^ laws and liberties were naturally inherent in 
tliemselves, and the laws by which ministers were made are the product of 
the churches. 

We conclude, therefore, that there was a local church that made Matthias, 
Paul and Barnabas ministers. They were the first of their kind, and serve 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 411 

as perpetual examples for all the rest. They did not make or constitute the 
churches, by which they were made ministers, by any inherent right in 
themselves. But it is certain there was vested in the churches a law and 
authority, by the great founder of the churches, to make and ordain minis- 
ters. This law was not, therefore, from the ministry, nor by the ministry, 
but the ministry was chosen and made by the churches, under the guidance 
of the Holy Spirit, according to and in pursuance of the liberty they had 
by the law of the gospel. Baptists are descended from those early disciples, 
who, under their respective covenants, were banded together in local sover- 
eign churches and under the laws of the gospel in and of themselves, being 
directed by the Spirit, made both apostles and ministers, and looked to no 
higher authority than that inherent in themselves for so doing. They have 
always been asserters of these privileges and liberties, acknowledging no 
laws other than those of the gospel, and receive no ministry nor countenance 
any but such as they themselves have made, and depose those already made 
who do not well and faithfully perform their covenant obligations. All of 
which is to be taken to be a manner of proceeding that agrees with that 
liberty wherewith Christ has made them free, making laws for themselves 
and ministers to serve the churches, rather than receive such as are made 
and imposed upon them by others. Hence, neither can bishops, by their 
episcopal power alone, nor presbyters, without the authority and assistance 
of the church, take upon themselves to ordain ministers, but it is a direct 
violation of apostolic church government, and is arrogantly assuming a 
power in Christ's name, which, by the divine law of the gospel, never was 
committed to them. 

When Titus visited the Isle of Crete he went under the direction of 
Paul, who appointed him to ordain elders in every church. Now, if Titus 
ordained elders in any other way than Paul was ordained himself — that is, 
by and through the instrumentality of the churches — to say the least of it he 
was not a good Baptist, for to them the acts and examples of the churches 
are laws of the highest authority, upon the divinity of which the certain 
truth and divine authority of church government stands, and is the authentic 
charter of the churches and the divine warrant of their institution. It 
must be so, or else church government carries no binding obligation at all 
in it. Until these first examples were laid down by the churches, it was un- 
certain how the apostles intended that ministers should be ordained. These 
examples, doubtless, were known to Titus before his departure to Crete, and 
but for them he would not have known how to ordain a minister, and unless 
he, as a good disciple, followed these divine examples, it is not known to 
this day how he ordained suitable men to become ministers to the churches 
in Crete, for the record is as silent as death as to how he did it. If he did 
it otherwise than Matthias, Paul and Barnabas were inducted into the min- 
istry, he established a precedent wholly different from the one we know was 
laid down before, which does not comport with the dignity and divinity of 
church government. The Christian world, all but Baptists, have ignored 
these examples of the election and ordination of the ministry, and have fol- 



412 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

lowed after Titus, and presumed that he, in and of himself, ordained minis- 
ters without the assistance and help of the churches ; thus placing the Chris- 
tian ministry, after this vague presumption, wholly upon another footing, 
ordained in another way, and deriving their authority and power from 
another channel in which the churches were not consulted, thus destroying 
that which is certain and following after that which has no foundation in 
fact. Ecclesiastical axioms in church government are not properly grounded 
upon Scripture examples, but examples are to be judged according to 
axioms. The certain is not proved by the uncertain, but the uncertain by 
the certain ; and everything is to be esteemed uncertain until it be proved 
to be certain. Axioms or self-evident propositions in church jurisprudence, 
as in mathematics, are evident to common sense ; and nothing is to be taken 
for an axiom that is not so. Baptists do not prove their ecclesiastical 
axioms by their propositions, but their propositions, which are abstruse, by 
such axioms as are evident to all, being plainly laid down in the law of the 
gospel itself. The principles of their law do not receive their authority from 
the ecclesiastical legislator and commentator, but they deserve praise for 
evolving none but such as are undeniably true. 

Now in secular societies they who have a right inherent in themselves, 
may resign it to others ; and they who can give a power to others may 
exercise it themselves, unless they secede from it by their own act ; for it is 
only a matter of convenience, of which they alone can be the judges, because 
it is for themselves only they judge. But of a church Paul says : Ye are 
God's household; ye are God's huildiyig, being built on the foundation of the 
apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone, in 
whom all the building fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the 
Lord. Such an institution is of divine origin, and the power it exercises in 
the call and ordination of the ministry is a divine power, and cannot be 
transferred to any minister or set of ministers, and has never been so trans- 
ferred. If each church, therefore, had not a power to elect and ordain, at 
any time, a minister which they had not before, none could have been 
created at all, for no ministry is eternal, or perpetual, by succession, as some 
would pretend. But in the present case, no transfer of authority from one 
man to another to ordain a minister is pretended, for Paul himself never 
had any authority to ordain any minister ; the right he had not, or at least 
never was known to exercise, his successor, if he had any, could not inherit, 
and consequently could not have had it, or could not have had any better 
title to it than that of usurpation. 

Therefore, Baptists have never suffered a self-constituted ministry to get a 
trick of empire over them, by imposing their sometimes false, and always 
unnecessary sentences and regulations upon them, wherein the faith and 
practice of the churches will depend upon the loose opinions of the officious, 
and then their belief and government will be like a rumor spread from a 
few unto the ears of the whole denomination, who, although they all tell the 
same story, yet are no more credible for the truth of what they teach than 
the first originators were for their authority. In all systems of church 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 413 

government, foreign to the apostolic, men dare not speak what they think, 
and dare not believe in anything except their man-made systems, and dare 
not give countenance, or even inquire into what the Scriptures really teach. 
They are bound down in it by their religious rulers and governors ; the 
church by the priests, the priests by the bishops, the bishops by the arch- 
bishops, the archbishops by the cardinals, the cardinals by the propaganda, 
and the propaganda by his supreme majesty — the pope. And that is the 
catholic church in all its hideousness and deformity, without one trace of it 
found in the Scriptures. 

Besides, in the apostolic form of church government it is difficult to see 
how the doctrine of apostolic succession can have any place at all, for when 
one minister dies the election of another in his stead belongs to the local 
church, to which belongs the choosing of all ministers under the direction of 
the Holy Spirit. And though the church may convene a presbytery to 
ordain a minister, yet it is still by its authority that the ordination is made. 
When Judas died the church at Antioch elected Barnabas to the ministry, 
there being need of one to take his place to supply the need of the churches. 
The apostles had no authority to make this calling and election in and of 
themselves, otherwise they would have done so independent of the church. 
The authority and function of a minister, though he be an apostle, is limited 
to his natural life. None of the apostles had. power to elect or name their 
successors. If they had power to name their successors they would be no 
more elective, but hereditary. If they had no power to elect or name their 
successors then some other power, which, after their death, must elect them, 
or else the office of the ministry would become extinct, and dissolve with the 
death of their predecessors. It must have been directed by Christ, and his 
apostles, that this right to constitute a minister be confined to the local 
church. For none have a right to give that which they have not the right 
to possess. But if there be none that can make a minister, after the decease 
of him that was before elected, except the church, then the church is obliged 
by the very nature of the case, as the church at Antioch was obliged, to 
provide by election his successor, to keep the office of the ministry in per- 
petual existence — not to keep the Vfiinister in perpetual existence, but the 
office. Ecclesiastical sovereignty was from the beginning always in that 
assembly which had the power to elect and ordain a minister. Therefore, it 
is manifest by the institution of a church, the question as to what minister 
shall succeed another has no place in church polity, but the election of a 
minister to fiU his own place in the church is always left to the church itself. 

And if this monarchical form of church government, with its pretended 
divine sanction, be still insisted upon, I desire to know which class or order 
of the early ministry were inferior to the bishops if all were alike ministers 
made so by the appointment of the apostles ? Under this apostolic appoint- 
ment one had as much right to be bishop as another. If there could be so 
many bishops where could the bishoprics be ? Could Titus and Timothy be 
singled out and called bishops and the others be inferior to them in rank 
when all received their appointment from the same hands? All of them had 



414 A TREATISE VFO:S BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

an equal part in the gift or inheritance, and, therefore, did not all of them 
by virtue of the appointment become bishops ? This being the case why is 
not the same eternally sub-divided to as many ministers as there are now in 
the world who are also bishops by the same right that Titus and Timothy 
were made bishops? This being the natural condition of them all how comes 
it to be altered when they imbishoped themselves to set up one or more to 
have a power over them all, and why should they divest themselves of their 
natural rights to the office of bishop to set one above themselves when all 
in the days of the apostles were equal ? and by virtue' of what law did they 
do it ? Which power, one above another, not being granted by any peculiar 
concession or institution, the same belongs to all ministers in equal propor- 
tion and dignity. 

Such a system of choosing the ministry may give to one exalted fame, and 
to the other oblivion. Such a government, w^hether the power be in an 
individual, or a few, turns on different principles from our own, and are 
subject to consequences corresponding with their principles. When distinct 
orders of the clergy exist, as among the Methodists, an arrangement, by 
which the people form one consolidated church government, must always 
have been an affair of compromise, and on their part, of compulsion. 
Originally numbers and power being on their side, they could never have 
consented, voluntarily, to elevate any class above themselves, or any 
minister above his ministerial brethren. Compromise in such cases must 
have been the result of conflicts, in which each party obtained all that it 
could, and the preponderance was given to either, according to its good or 
bad fortune. In the formation of such a government, the example of the 
apostolic churches could not have been followed, nor can the example of such 
a government, either in its career or fate, be considered as applicable to 
Baptist church government. 

The strongest propensity of church dignitaries in all episcopal forms of 
government is to gather power into the hands of the bishops and other 
church officers. This begets a propensity to usurp the power of the churches 
for the sake of getting power into their own hands. This form of govern- 
ment has the strongest tendency of any conceivable human institution of 
depriving others of that power which legitimately belongs to them for their 
own benefit, both by the magnitude of the temptation, and the mode of 
reaching it. These forms of government are, therefore, founded in the evil 
moral qualities of man, and it is unnatural that evil moral qualities should 
produce good moral effects ; for it consists in a degree of power capable of 
exciting evil moral qualities, craving self-gratification at the expense of the 
churches of Christ. Nothing can prevent this unscriptural deformity but a 
removal of the power of the priesthood, and if the power is removed, the 
principle of episcopacy is destroyed, though the name should remain; 
because they would want the degree of power necessary to excite and bring 
into action the evil moral qualities of a privileged order of the ministry. 

Christ alone is head of the church, and. all his ministers are equal in power 
and authority. If any other were equal to him in wisdom, power and 



OE, THE COMMOX LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 415 

goodness to us, he might challenge the same duty from us. If it were lawful 
uuder the laws of the gospel to create a ruler over the churches, receiving 
existence from no other soiurce than the authority of the law, we were, 
offered the protection of a wisdom subject to no error and was indeed 
infallible, a goodness that could never fail, and a power that nothing could 
resist, it were reasonable for us to enter into a covenant, submit ourselves to 
him, and with all the faculties of our minds and hearts to devote ourselves 
to his service. But if there be no such man found, there is no other head 
over the church but Christ. And all right-thinking Christian men lay 
severe censures upon those, who, not thus qualified, take upon themselves to 
govern the Lord's freemen equal to, or better, than themselves ; and judges 
the assumption of such powers by persons not qualified for the administration 
of them, as veritable usurpations which no law of the gospel can justify. 
This shows, that such as deny that the ministry should be set up by, and in 
accordance with, the gospel, and that laws may be imposed upon them, do 
equally set themselves against the opinions of the wisest men, and the word 
of God. And if it should be held that religious liberty should make Chris- 
tians a little disorderly and schismatic, we may reasonably doubt that pure reli- 
gion may make others worse ; so that none will be fit subjects of this boasted 
government, but those who have neither religion nor religious liberty ; and 
that it cannot be introduced until both be extinguished. 

The strength of a church is not in the minister, but the strength of the 
minister is in the church. The wisdom, prudence and piety of a minister 
may add power and strength to the church, but the foundation of its 
greatness and spirituality will be in itself. It is contrary to the genius of 
the gospel to put the ministry either before or aboVe the church, and they 
who do it invert the order of God's law. No minister can be before or above 
the church unless he be superior to the whole church ; and he cannot be 
superior to the church, who is not so by the consent of the church, nor to any 
other purpose than the church consents to. This cannot be the case of a 
church of Christ, which can have no equal or superior within itself A 
church of Jesus Christ cannot recede from its own sovereignty and right, as 
a private man from the knowledge of his own weakness and inability to 
defend himself must come under the protection of a greater power than his 
own. The local church being the only true ecclesiastical body on earth can 
have no superior. If no such thing as elevating one minister above another 
was ever known in apostolic times, or could have no effect if it had been 
done afterwards, it is most absurd to impose it upon the churches now. The 
free disciples of Christ, therefore, cannot be deprived of their natural rights 
upon a frivolous pretence to that which never was and never can be. They 
who elect and ordain ministers of the gospel and give to them such name, 
form and power under the laws of the gospel as they think fit, know whether 
the end for which they were created, be performed or not. They who give 
a being to the power which had none, can only judge whether it be employed 
to their welfare, or turned to their injury. They do not ordain one, or a few 
men, that they and their pretended successors may live in pomp and splendor, 



416 A TREATISE UPOI^ BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDENCE ; 

but that the gospel maybe preached in its purity and the ordinances of God's 
house may be administered. No wise man need think that this can be done 
if those who set themselves to overthrow the law of the gospel, are to betheir 
own judges. The true disciples of Christ who have felt the smart of the 
follies of those who have wandered away from the true plan of church 
government, know what remedies are most fit to be applied, as well as the 
best time of applying them. They found the effects of extreme corruption in 
church government to be so desperately pernicious that true Christianity will 
greatly suffer, unless it be corrected and the churches reduced to their first 
principles. 

Hence any one who takes the pains to study these underlying principles 
will at once see that the hierarchical form of church government resembles 
not the apostolic in either form or practice ; that the beginning and con- 
tinuance of the papal system was contrary to, and inconsistent with, the 
apostolical. That in the distribution of the authority of the Christian min- 
istry no one of them had any other right than what was common to all, ex- 
cept it were that the pastors in charge of churches were authorized to per- 
form some duties that did not devolve upon evangelists in the general spread 
of the gospel in destitute places. This kind of a ministry had its root and 
beginning in the wisdom of the apostles, and these kind of churches were 
first erected by them, and are the lawful kingdoms and commonwealths of 
Christ ; and the rules by which they are governed are alone the laws of the 
gospel. These church governments have ever been the nurses of Christian 
freedom and liberty of conscience, and the churches living under them have 
flourished in spiritual peace and happiness ; whereas the other sort, spring- 
ing from usurpation and wrong, have ever gone under the name of the uni- 
versal church with its concomitant idea of priest-craft, and by foment- 
ing vices, like to those from whence they grew, have brought all the dark- 
ness and misery into the Christian world, and disgrace upon ecclesiastical 
government. 

Men, and especially ministers of the latitudinarian school, have ever had 
a strange propensity to run into all manner of excesses, even in so sacred a 
matter as that of church government, when plenty of means invite, and there 
is no power to deter them ; of which the adherents of popery and priest- 
craft took advantage, and knowing that their subsistence depended upon it, 
they thought themselves obliged by interest as well as inclination to make 
church honors, dignities and preferments the rewards of vice and corrup- 
tion. Though in the beginning some were so good that they could not be 
perverted, and others so bad that they could be corrupted ; yet great num- 
bers always follow the cause that is favored and rewarded by those who 
assume to govern the churches, and hand out church livings and dignities. 
The Christian world was not without papists even as early as the second and 
third centuries, but as the churches receded from the apostolic age, they 
thrived the more, and the further they departed from the faith and practice 
of the gospel, the deeper they steeped the world in crime and misery. And 
as a religious people can only be judged by their deeds and practices, he that 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 417 

would know whether this papal form of church government, or the apostolic 
economy most foment, or punish ecclesiastical corruption, ought to examine 
the principleo of both in the light of the Scriptures and ecclesiastical history 
and compare them one with the other. 

It was the very fundamental principle of the polity of the churches of 
Christ, that all power should be equally distributed and divided up between 
all ministers and churches alike. A duly accredited ministry after the laws 
and forms of the gospel, governing the churches with their assistance and 
consent, can have no interest distinct, the one from the other, or have any 
desire to diminish the strength of one another, or to lessen the authority of 
the churches of which they are members, and by which they have their 
ministerial subsistence. On the other hand, the pope who governs the 
church for himself, and seeks his own self-aggrandizement and that of his 
clergy, looks upon his subjects as the root of his greatest danger, and desires 
and does render them so ignorant and blind, that they may neither dare or 
attempt the breaking of the yoke he lays upon them, nor trust one another 
in any design for the recovery of their religious liberty. So that the same 
corruption which preserves such a system, if it were introduced into free 
and independent Baptist churches, would not only weaken, but utterly de- 
stroy them. The one fattens and thrives on that which would destroy 
the other. 

All things have their beginning and continuance from a principle in 
nature suitable to their original. All tyrannies, either in church or state, 
have had their beginning from corruption. The history of all ages show 
and that all those who made themselves tyrants did it by the help of the worse 
the slaughter of the best. Men could not be made subservient to their lusts 
and greed of power while they continued in their integrity and maintained 
their Christian consciences. Hence the wholesale slaughter of those who 
have held to Baptist principles in all ages since the erection of this terrible 
machine called the Koman church. As their business was to destroy those 
who would not be corrupted, and they must, therefore, endeavor to maintain 
or increase the corruption by which they attained their greatness ; and in 
their palmiest days, when they enjoyed both temporal and spiritual rule on 
earth. Baptists were accustomed to look upon them as they do upon thunder 
and lightning, and every man wished it might not strike his person. When 
they were thus hunted down as wolves, they had neither strength nor incli- 
nation to defend themselves, nor could they be forced to forsake their faith, 
nor to fight for their would-be religious masters, and least of all, in a public 
way to increase their own influence, which the more it was spread and be- 
came known was the more destructive to themselves. This was the fate of 
the humble people who, since the apostles' times, adhered to the form of 
church government erected by them, and believing in the equal distribution 
of ecclesiastical powers among all ministers and churches alike, lest it might 
develop itself into an engine of ^oppression and destroy the very principles 
which they were instituted by Christ to maintain. 

That which has made Baptist church government so stable and kept it so 
27 



418 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

faitliful to the primitive models and examples, is a strict adherence to the 
principle that the church which elects and ordains its ministers makes them 
to be what they are. They have ever contended that it is absurd to say 
that the churches have more power than what we see the apostolic churches 
exercised under the supervision of the apostles, and that a minister that has 
nothing but what was given, he who has been made a minister by the 
churches can have no more authority than is given ; that is to say, they 
cannot assume a power if they have it not. It is equally absurd to say that 
the churches have been invested by Christ with authority to do any and 
everything they please. They are as much hedged in and obliged by the laws 
of the gospel as are ministers. If there was but one local church in the world, 
it would be as complete in itself as if there were millions of them, and the pas- 
tor and other officers of that church would have authority to exercise all the 
authority that Christ intended ministers should exercise on earth, and no more. 

These are the views which Baptists have ever held concerning the powers 
and duties of the Christian ministry. And no doubt that these distinguishing 
principles have had advocates in every age, and that among those who are 
universally regarded as the defenders and preservers of primitive Christianity 
during the dark ages in which they were the main recipients of the papal 
persecutions. The most distinguishing feature of these defenders of the 
faith was, that they were baptizers by immersion, and to make thefr offence 
the more deserving of censure they were denominated re-baptizers of such as 
came over to them from the Catholics. The question then is whether there 
is such a similarity of principles between the primitive churches' doctrine and 
practices as compared with Baptist churches of this day, that will entitle them 
to claim succession from those apostolic institutions. Not a succession of 
ministers, particularly, but a succession of churches, ministers and persons, 
at times numerous, at other times scattered by persecution and hidden, 
holding substantially the same order of church government, doctrine and 
principles which Baptists hold to-day. The true rule of succession is a 
substantial oneness of faith and practice under the laws of the gospel. It is 
not the ministry that makes these laws, but the laws that make the ministry. 
They are under the laws of the gospel and not the laws under them. It is 
to these laws the ministry owe obedience as well as the humblest member of 
the church. They have no superior but Christ and the laws that make them 
to be what they are. He that is sent, is not greater than he that sends. They 
come when the church calls them, and they go when the church sends them, 
for it is a point of service to come when a minister is called. We preach 
ourselves your servants. Who, therefore, is sufficient for these things f 

Lastly, I conceive that herein I have as best I could set out the true 
nature of the call, ordination and powers of the Christian ministry, from 
which we see that there are several eminently different opinions concerning 
this great institution. Let every man study closely this momentous ques- 
tion and determine for himself of the source from whence the ministry 
derive their power and the nature of the tenure by which they hold their 
X)ffice, and the duties God has laid upon them as such. 



OK, THE COMMOX LAW OF THE GOSPEL, 419 



CHAPTER XV. 

EQUALITY OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY ASSERTED. 

WITHOUT any disposition to be accounted among those wlio love to 
speak evil of high church dignitaries, I wish to take up the subject 
as to whether one minister has more power than another, and whether there 
be any distinction between them. This subject has a relation to church gov- 
ernment and polity, that is very important to understand. In the first place 
no minister can be a true minister whose church is not a true church, no 
more than a magistrate can be a lawful magistrate who is not made so by 
the terms of the law. This is a proposition to which all will agree. A true 
minister is one thing, and a good one trying to do the work of a minister, is 
quite another. The former respects only their having duly and regularly 
obtained the rights and authority of their office ; the other relates to the 
faithful and conscientious discharge of it. 

The general proposition concerning the superiority of one minister over 
another, cannot be proved by a single example where one minister in the 
Scriptures exercised such power, no not even among the apostles who had all 
power given them. Besides if there be a general power everywhere in the 
text forbidding ministers to assume authority one over another, they can do 
it no where, and at no time, aU receiving their authority and appointment 
from the same source. It is to no purpose to say that the primitive churches 
being weak- and few in number had no need for presiding elders, presbyters, 
bishops and popes to rule them. For, if the general thesis be true, and if 
apostolic church government is based upon principle they must have had 
them ; and if they had them not, and no trace in the Scriptures can be seen 
of them, none are now obliged to have them, without the charge of betray- 
ing their trust. Other denominations who have their religious communities 
in their own right, may do as they please ; but Baptists must follow such 
orders as they receive from the law of the gospel. If others do not enjoy 
that exemption from priestly domination that Baptists do, they must have 
been deprived of it, either by some unjustifiable means, or by their own con- 
sent. But thanks to the Saviour of the world, who came and founded these 
wonderful churches, we know no people who have a better right to religious 
liberty, or have better defended it than Baptists. And if we do not degen- 
erate from the virtue of our Baptist ancestors we may hope to transmit it 
entire to the saved whom the Lord will in the future add to the churches. 

It is but absurd to say that our Saviour gave any supremacy to any one 
of his apostles above another. This is evident from many places in the 
Scriptures, notably this from Luke's Gospel, And there was also a strife among 



420 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

thtin, which of them should he accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, 
The kings of the gentiles exercise lordship over them, hut ye shall not he so. 
Any one who reads this passage in connection with that which goes before 
and follows it, will find that there is no place in the whole Scriptures that 
makes more against the supremacy of one minister over another than this 
one. Bear in mind that the priests and scribes were seeking to kill our 
Saviour at the passover ; that Judas was possessed with the determination 
to betray him, and the day of celebrating the passover was come, and our 
Saviour celebrated the supper with his apostles, which he would do no more 
till the kingdom of God was come ; and then announced to them that one 
of them would betray him ; and the question was asked which one it would 
be. They then entered into a contention who should be the greatest man 
in that kingdom ; whereupon our Saviour told them that the kings of the 
nations had dominion over their subjects, but it should not be so to them, 
and that they should endeavor to serve one another, and that the greatest 
among them should be the servant of them all. He told them that he would 
ordain them a kingdom, but it would be such an one as his Father had 
ordained for him, a kingdom that he was soon to purchase with his blood, 
and they would not possess till his second coming. They should then eat 
and drink at his table, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes- of Israel. 
And, addressing himself to Peter, he says : Simon, Simon, Satan hath de- 
sired you, that he might sift you as wheat ; hut I have prayed for thee, that 
thy faith fail not ; and when thou art converted strengthen thy brethren. 
That is to say, that Satan by suggesting a present supremacy and dominion 
seeks to weaken your faith of the future; but he had prayed for him, that 
his faith should not fail ; and that when he was converted, or convinced of 
his error, he would understand that Christ's kingdom was of another world, 
and then he would confirm the faith of his brethren. To which impulsive 
Peter answered, as one who no longer expected any supremacy in this world, 
Lord, I am ready to go ivith thee, not only to prison, hut to death. Whereby 
it is manifest that this minister had no supremacy, and no superior power or 
jurisdiction given him in this world over his fellows, over the church, but on 
the contrary a charge was given him to teach all the other apostles that they 
should have none. 

Now, in the Gospel by Matthew, Christ uses this language : Thou art 
Peter, and upon this roch I will huild my church. , . . And I will give unto 
thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. The term kingdom of heaven is 
never used to mean the visible local church, as the church at Jerusalem, at 
Corinth or at Colosse, but it means nothing more than the spiritual reign 
of Christ, as was confessed by Peter in the same connection. In the pas- 
sage just quoted is the first mention made by Christ of the building of his 
church, which was to be moulded and built anew by him after his ascension. 
The keys of knowledge having been before in the hands of high priests and 
Levites, but now as the church was to be of a new frame, the keys were 
new, so he declares a new use of them to other persons than those in whose 
hands they were formerly placed. For Christ, being come, shows his pre- 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 421 

rogative by declaring the old regime to be done away, saying : I will build 
my church, and I will give unto thee the keys. 

The term keys was a figurative expression, well known in Jewish litera- 
ture, and Christ here used it emblematically, as the Jews used to deliver 
to those upon whom the degree of doctor was conferred, the key to 
the receptacle in the temple where the sacred books were kept, signifying 
that he was given authority to teach and explain the Scriptures to the peo- 
ple. Now, here stood before the great Teacher a new disciple, and inasmuch 
as he was to build a new house, and as he had the keys thereof to di-pose of 
anew, he delivered them to Peter in a representative respect. He first 
addressed him as Simon Bar-Jonas, the name under which he had been 
called to be an apostle, but now he changes his name, and says, Thou art 
Peter, and vpon this rock I build my church. It would be well to remem- 
ber that God, therefore, in first delivering his promises and grand charters, 
singled out some one man in whose name the same should run. So Adam 
was first fixed upon when God, in his name, gave the earth to the rest of 
the sons of men. So Abraham was singled out as the father of the faithful, 
especially to represent the Jews, who were his children to whom God gave 
the promises of the land of Canaan, not in a legal sense, but representa- 
tively. For the promise that he should be the heir of the world, was not to 
Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. 
And no more was the magistracy of the church given to Peter and his so- 
called successors through the law, but through the righteousness of faiths. 
Christ fii'st blessed Peter as Simon, and then changed his name to Peter, 
and so intrusted his charter of the keys to him as the representative of all 
the faithful in all ages to whom the grant was made, as well as to himself. 

For Peter was more forward than all the rest to utter his faith that Christ 
was the son of God. Elsewhere, Peter makes this same confession in the 
name of all' the apostles : And we believe and are sure that thou art that 
Christ, the son of the living God. But here this grant of the keys is first 
uttered singly in his name, and on this occasion, Christ honors this great 
confessor of him as the man in whose name this great charter to preach the 
gospel and to build churches should run, he bearing therein the persons of 
them all that were to have any portion of ecclesiastical power, whether of 
his apostles or of the churches of believers, that they were commissioned 
to build. And Peter is singled out as the legislature singles out one man or 
several men, in whose name the corporate government of a city is to be first 
organized, and then run. And as this honor was peculiarly his, and he is 
singled out to be the first charter member of his churches, and the common 
representative of all the other apostles under the New Testament, which honor 
he has to this day, even as Abraham and Moses had the like honor under 
the old law. It is evident that this is so, for the reason that Christ, in a 
special manner, honored Peter to be the beginner of the apostolic churches, 
when he, through the Spirit, was the means of convertmg a whole multitude 
at one sermon on the day of Pentecost. 

Neither is it to be understood that these keys were given to Peter to con- 



422 A TKEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPEUDENCE ; 

vey them to others derivatively, but he takes them representatively. There- 
fore, it was not necessary that all power should be in Peter's person, or in 
his office as an apostle, for he did not say that he would build his church 
upon Peter, as if he had received all power from the church to rule over 
her, as a king or lord does, but it was only a typical representation ; that is, 
he received that power which the churches and the ministry should receive 
in themselves afterwards, and which he received in a representative capacity 
both for himself and the churches, as a common person standing for and 
spoken to for all the rest. Besides, Christ did not say that he would give 
him the keys of the church, but the keys of the kingdom of heaven, which 
is quite another thing. Besides, again, he did not say / give, which if he 
had said to him only as an apostle, constituting him a magistrate or high 
priest at present, but he said I will give, in the future, because the churches 
were not yet set up, and the power was afterwards to be given when he 
should be pleased to declare it by himself or by his apostles. But if there 
be doubt as to what all this means, the best criterion to be governed by is 
to note the actions and the examples of the apostles, and see whether the 
one or the other exercised any supremacy above another ; and in all their 
conduct and teaching we cannot find any trace of such a supremacy. We 
admit there might be primacy in Peter, but nowhere can it be found that he 
exercised a supremacy. 

When we say that all the civil power is in a state, it is meant that the 
governor has one part, the legislature another, and the judiciary still another; 
and likewise the church and its respective officers, all combined, have all 
ecclesiastical power, and at first was given to Peter, as bearing the person of 
them all, as nowhere can we find that Peter ever exercised all these functions 
at once, or set up any claim, or right to supremacy. And it is evident that 
afterwards in those apostolic times, all churches, all ministers alike, and all 
believers in the several churches thus set up, claimed and exercised a. 
personal share in the exercise of ecclesiastical power ; and not a word is 
recorded of Peter's interference, or complaint that they had usurped his 
rights to the keys, which Christ had given him, as the supreme pontiff of the 
church. What a timid apostle Peter was ! that he should in his own life- 
time allow the keys to be taken from him without a murmur, and that to the 
complete overthrow of the whole order of Christ's government on earth ; 
that is according to the belief of some. 

The occasion of this promise was Peter's confessing, that Christ was the 
Son of God, which cannot be confined to ministers alone, but unto believers 
also, and the promise is here suited to the occasion. Then again the name 
Peter by which Christ designated this apostle, and which he here anew gives 
him, with the reason annexed, that is : Upon this rock, in an allusion to 
Petra, signifying one built on the rock, and so of the same name and nature 
of the rock, shows this to have been Christ's meaning in promising him the 
keys. He, however, did not say, Thou shall he called Peter, but Thou art 
Peter ; that is thou art a stone, and built on a rock in the confession you 
have just made. Peter himself in his first letter applies this very expression 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 423 

to all believers, Ye are also as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house ; as 
if he had said. It is not I, only, that am Peter, that Christ intended ; it was 
not so spoken to me only, but unto you all. And he opens his second letter, 
thus, To them that have obtained a like precious faith with us. As much as 
to say : You have all received like faith and like powers with me. Showing 
conclusively that the keys were given primarily to the faithful, and not to 
any one man, or set of men, exclusive of others. Seeing then that our 
Saviour has denied that his kingdom is of this world, and seeing he has said, 
he came not to judge, but to save the world, he has not subjected us to the 
rule of the clergy, except as humble pastors of local churches, feeding their 
respective flocks, and leading them into green pastures, and pointing them to 
the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. They had no 
commission to make laws, but to teach obedience to laws already made. 
Their teachings were nothing but counsel and advice, and not laws in the 
true sense of that word. 

The question then narrows itself down to this : Does the usurpation of 
ecclesiastical powers by popes, bishops, or presbyters confer the same right 
to govern the churches as the divine rights under the apostolic system ? Are 
we to look upon the power, and not the ways by which it is obtained ? Is 
the possession and exercise of these extra-ecclesiastical functions only to be 
taken as proof of the right ; and must men venerate the present power, as 
set up by Christ though gained by usurpation, and not as coming from the 
authority of the great Founder of the churches? 

Men must not impose laws upon the churches of Christ without a thus 
sayeth the Lord. With Baptists this is the greatest reason in the world, 
God hath said it, therefore it is true. If this be allowed it would be a spur 
sufficient to lead them to the greatest lengths in church government, and be 
a poison that would fill the spirits of the gentlest ecclesiastic with the wildest 
vagaries. If all men should believe this, there would hardly be a minister 
left w^ho would not give himself up to overthrow and subvert the churches of 
our blessed Lord for the sake of the good livings they might get in the 
scramble. Nothing more is required to fill the Christian world, as it has 
done, with chaos and confusion and darkness than the general reception of 
these precepts. None but the ignorant and superstitious can look upon that 
as a sin against Christ's government, which shall render the person of one 
man sacred and exalted above his brethren ; nor fear to attempt that which 
shall make him God's vicegerent on earth. And Baptists doubt, whether the 
wickedness of filling men's hearts with such notions was ever equalled, 
unless by him who said, Ye shall not die, but be as gods. 

When we cut ourselves loose from the Scriptures, the sacred law and un- 
alterable charter of Christ's churches, we drift out upon the wide sea of 
speculation, without chart or compass, to be blown about by every wind and 
doctrine. For we must know that ecclesiastical power cannot independ- 
ently of the local church be conferred upon the ministry, but must forever 
follow the rule of nature, as any other profane society. The character of a 
true minister of Christ constituted and ordained after the laws and precepts 



424 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPKUDENCE ; 

of Christ's teachings, is divine, indelible and incommunicable. It cannot be 
transferred to another, swelling and puffing itself up and developing into 
something beyond its real nature, and claim a divine efficacy in itself beyond 
what Christ intended. The institution of tbe ministry remains the same for- 
ever. The minister himself may, and must die, and when he passes off' the 
ministerial stage of action, his functions cease and cannot be transmitted ; 
but Christ raises up another in his place to fill his own functions in the 
churches. For these reasons we see that popes, bishops and presbyters can- 
not confer the power to rule the churches, for they cannot give that which 
they have not themselves. They who have nothing can give nothing. They 
who are only usurpers cannot make another real, and the vague whimsy 
of popes, bishops and presbyters making ministers to be rulers and gov- 
ernors of the churches, and these men conferring that right on others comes 
to naught, and falls to the ground. 

It is plainly taught in the Scriptures that no one man or set of men, out- 
side the local churches, can give ecclesiastical power to others, unless the 
authority be expressly given him in the New Testament, but that he receives 
his ministerial rights from the call of the Holy Spirit, and the election of 
the church of which he is a member, as Paul, Barnabas and Matthias, for 
examples, were made ministers ; first by the Holy Spirit and then confirmed 
or sealed by the churches to which they belonged. It cannot be palmed off* 
upon us that, that which is from those who assume to be the chief men of 
the churches, is from the church itself. It cannot be said that a minister 
who is so selected can claim his right from the church as a donative right, 
and, therefore, it is from God alone. Had God so intended it he would not 
have laid down those examples of the apostles just named, which prove to 
the contrary. In other words, while God calls by his Spirit, yet he would 
have the local churches to ordain and set apart ; thus blending the divine 
with the human call as he has wrought all his wondrous works through 
human means, promising his blessing upon the institution. A man cannot 
thus claim a royal charter from God, and say that the act of a college of 
bishops, or ruling elders conferring the power on him independently of the 
local churches, was the act of God, and, therefore, those who are thus made 
ministers rule by a divine right ; in other words, whatever is pretended to 
be done in the matter of church government, by a set of ecclesiastics inde- 
pendently of the churches, cannot be imputed to Christ, and that now, since 
the ministry attempts to do what Christ and the local church alone can do, 
that, therefore, that Christ and the church does what they do. Baptists 
cannot see and comprehend why the act of the churches, as in the case of 
Paul, Barnabas and Matthias, and all other apostolic ministers, without so 
much as one exception, should not have a thousand-fold more virtue and 
efficacy in it, and be equally attributed to Christ, who through his apostles 
instituted that way of calling a minister. 

Upon the same grounds we may conclude, that no extra privilege is pecu- 
liarly annexed to any form of church government ; that all officers are equally 
the ministers of Christ, who perform the work for which they were insti- 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 425 

tuted by Christ, under the laws of the gospel ; and that the local clmrches, 
who made them ministers, may proportion, regulate and determine their 
power, as to time, measure and number of persons, as was done in the apos- 
tolic times, which can be nothing more than their own good, and the good 
of the cause. Then why should a free and independent church of the living 
God have any person to rule over them to whom they owe nothing, that 
he might live in pomp and pleasure ? This shows the work of all ministers 
to be always and everywhere the same, even the preaching of the gospel, 
feeding their own flocks, and shielding them from the wolves that would 
devour them. He therefore is a minister of Christ, and he only, who is 
made a minister after the primitive precepts and examples of the New 
Testament, and does the work of Christ, in the manner, and after the exact 
teachings of the apostles, who are better guides than ministers created by 
latter-day saints not well inspired. 

The order of this divine institution is inverted and the ministerial office 
vacated, if the power be turned into channels not warranted in the law. 
And they who are the authors of all this confusion and darkness, cannot 
but be the ministers of him who sets himself up against God ; because it is 
impossible that he could have been the author of two forms of church gov- 
ernment, the one diametrically opposite and antagonistic to the other. For 
there is no sort of resemblance between the gospel, or Baptist form of church 
government, and that set up and practiced by post-apostolic sects Truth 
and falsehood can not proceed from the same root. It is folly in those who 
set up such a perverted system of polity, and call those bodies, wherein such 
power is attempted to be exercised, churches of Christ. Oar Saviour said, Ij 
ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the work of Abraham. If these 
bodies were the churches of Christ, they ought to be modeled after the 
divine patterns, and do alone the work of those churches ; and nowhere in 
the world can the rule be found to go by, except in the study of these models 
in action. 

That is to say, no minister can execute the office and work of a minister 
to the benefit, and in the true spirit of the gospel of Christ, and the spread 
of his true religion according to the examples of those servants, the apostles 
of Christ, without sin, and disobedience, unless he have a precise word par- 
ticularly directed to him for it in the Scriptures, as Abraham and Moses 
had in the old law. The Lord may sufier it, as he suffered the rebellious 
tribes to choose a king, after the manner of the nations of the earth, but he 
has not promised to bless those who do it ; neither has that kind of govern- 
ment any divine efficacy in it, beyond the naked organization itse'f. So 
that whatever can be said of these hierarchical forms of church government 
they are but visionary, and without divine warrant ; and although there be 
some of the best and wisest men in them, and zealous, but as surely as the 
Lord brought to naught the folly of the rebellious tribes, he will as surely 
bring these good people back from their wanderings to the simplicity of the 
gospel plan of church polity. The Lord is not a latitudinarian, but has 
ever been a strict constructionist of his government on earth, and will ulti- 



426 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

mately bring his own back to a perfect allegiance to his government. But 
since the time when first our Protestant brethren took upon themselves this 
form of government, while they cut loose from, and refused to practice many 
of the traditional doctrines of the church of Eome, yet this one, which is the 
root of all the rest, that the kingdom of Christ is already come, and was set 
up at the resurrection of our Saviour, is still retained ; and, therefore, there 
is need of a ruler, or rulers, to take charge of that government. 

Whereas, when that kingdom comes Christ has promised that he himself, 
shall be king of it, and that his apostles shall sit upon twelve thrones, and 
shall be the judges. They have anticipated the kingdom and have endea- 
vored to set it up in advance. But cui bono ? What profit do they expect 
from it ? The same that his highness the pope expects from it : that is, to 
have sovereign poAver over the people, especially Christ's elect, and to keep 
them from setting up Christ's ecclesiastical judicatories, the local churches, 
after the primitive models, and to usurp and continue unlawful ecclesiastical 
power over their brethren. The authors of all this darkness and confusion 
are the papists and those who, in a lesser and milder degree, but in imitation 
of them, claim a right to rule this mythical kingdom on earth. For who 
is it that being so blind and ignorant as to believe that the pope is infallible, 
and cannot err, will not readily obey him in whatsoever he commands ? 

Therefore, true church government is neither Judaism nor the ghost of 
the long since deceased Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave 
thereof, but it is a new creation divinely appointed. While the world is its 
diocese, it is not conceived to be a kingdom which in any way needs a 
temporal or spiritual ruler, to be compared to the nations of the earth. 
While it is the vehicle of all ecclesiastical power on earth, it forces none to 
an unwilling obedience. While it is the custodian of the truth, it formulates 
no creeds, nor pretends to infallibility. While it has a standard of truth, it 
confers not upon its ministry, gr any other privileged class, the sole authority 
to interpret the Scriptures, and to regulate ecclesiastical discipline. Its 
power and sovereignty cannot be transferred to another. It cannot forfeit 
it, is the sole judge of its polity and religion, makes the Scriptures for itself 
its own canonical rules, is supreme judge of controversies arising in its own 
bosom, inflicts its own discipline, chooses its own ministers and other 
ofiicers, and does whatever else is necessary to its complete government. 
While its ministry is stripped of all power as rulers, yet to them is due the 
honor of the grand achievement of preserving pure and undefiled, as the 
apostles left them, Christ's churches on earth. It is, therefore, absurd for 
one to pretend to be a minister, who has not received his appointment and 
credentials from the local church and whose acts as a minister are not valid, 
for the essence of a minister consists in the validity of his acts. For he is not 
a minister de facto who calls himself so and assumes the title to himself, but 
he who is by the consent of the local church possessed of ministerial power. 

Now the whole protestant world revolts at the idea of a papal form of 
church government. But how can our protestant friends be against the 
papists, and be right, when they built their ecclesiastical structures upon 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 427 

this fouudation ? They have taken their stand upon the lofty pinnacle 
erected by the papacy ; they first went astray, and as willing subjects pro- 
testantism followed in their footsteps. Upon this foundation they built their 
structure without even brushing away the rubbish. For, be it understood, 
that episcopacy is no more defensible in church government than the papacy. 
The one has been developed out of the other. They have either been blind, 
or they have given heed to the things that were far from them, having taken 
their stand upon the lofty height erected by their catholic fathers But 
there has ever been a peculiar people in the world, since the days of John 
the Baptist, who have not stood upon so high a pinnacle, that they overlook 
the law, but standing on the ground they see that which those upon the 
higher eminence overlook. The great and learned men of the world, such 
as Wesley, Calvin and others, who have erected post-apostolic churches, mis- 
took the very principle and foundation of primitive church government. 
This misfortune befell them because they went not back to the New Testa- 
ment, with earnest and prayerful hearts, and studied what Christ would have 
them do and believe, but learned lessons from papal schoolmen to round 
out a theory, and to bolster up a power wrong in the pope, but right in 
themselves. 

Hence, an argument against the papacy, is an argument against the epis- 
copacy, both being rooted in and sprung from the same soil. No impartial 
reader and student of ecclesiastical government, in all ages of the world, in- 
cluding especially the apostolic age, as we find it recorded in the New Testa- 
ment, but will say that the Baptists stand at one end of the line and the 
papists are planted at the other. There is no intermediate ground. He 
that is not for me is against me, says our Saviour. But if the catholic form 
of church government be obnoxious to those who would take all ecclesiasti- 
cal power out of the hands of one man and place it in the hands of a few 
choice spirits, such as bishops, or ruling elders, because grounded on the 
dominion of the pope, with whom there had been no former covenant, why 
should church government be more defensible in the hands of a few than in 
the hands of one man, since the Scriptures warrant neither ? If Christ con- 
ferred the right upon Peter to govern the church, nowhere in the Scrip- 
tures can it be shown that Peter ever exercised the power ; and much more 
difiicult is it to show that the apostles, as a college of bishops, or a synod of 
elders, ever banded themselves together, and either claimed, or exercised the 
right to rule the churches in faith or practice. No impartial reader of the 
New Testament, searching for the truth as it is, and not what it ought to be, 
can find in it a trace of either papacy or episcopacy ; but of the two forms of 
government the papist can lay the better claim, gathered out of those allu- 
sions to the keys having been delivered to Peter, admitting the fact, for the 
sake of argument, that it means what they say it does. But taking out 
those figurative references to the keys, and Christ having built his church 
upon Petra, signifying one built on the rock, then there is more ground for 
believing that Paul was the ruler of the apostolic churches, from the very 
prominent part Peter suffered him to take in the government of the churches, 



428 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDENCE ; 

and that without ever raisiog his voice or using his apostolic pen against it. 
Showing that all true ministers must have inherited the rights and powers 
to which every one has an equal title, and that which is supremacy, if in one, 
when it is equally divided among all, is that universal liberty which Baptists 
assert and say is the true rule of the gospel. For he who is not in his own 
power and is not the equal of others cannot have a part in the government 
of others. 

If the power of popedom was conferred upon Peter, and not upon him 
and his successors, and not naming how his successors should be chosen, 
who knows upon whom the power fell at the death of that apostle ? It 
would be a poor frame of government that did not set out to whom the 
right to govern belonged, specifically setting out who should succeed one 
another in the line of government. If the law provided that a governor 
should be set apart to govern, without prescribing who should succeed him, 
when and how he should be chosen, the government would, upon the death 
of the first governor, come to an end, and afterwards all would be chaos 
and confusion. Those who adhere to these whimsical absurdities ought to 
be able to prove that there had been a man somewhere in the world wlio had 
the right to succeed Peter in himself, and telling who he was, and show how 
this 1-ight might be transmitted from generation to generation, that we might 
know where and how to seek Peter's successor. Before Baptists could be 
accused of ignorance in not knowing these things without explanation, they 
ought to inform us how it may be possible to know him, or what it would 
it avail us if we did know him, for it is in vain to know to whom belongs a 
right that never was, never will be, and never can be exercised or executed. 
But like our Catholic, Episcopal and Presbyterian friends, we may assume 
that as this great pontifical office must have been in Peter, or in a chosen 
body of bishops or elders, if any, who never executed it in apostolic times, 
as they exercise ecclesiastical power in this, the nineteenth century ; and the 
greater belief — the one in harmony with the Scriptures — is, that there never 
was such a power conferred by the gospel but that it has been usurped and 
continued over a people in religious affairs, contrary to the laws of Christ 
and against both reason and nature. 

Besides, if ecclesiastical government be in the Pope, it must be in 
him only. It cannot be at the same time in the pope and in the bishops 
and elders without the pope, and be called a divine institution ; or, as to that 
matter, an intelligent ordinance of man. God is not the author of confu- 
sion ; he does nothing in vain. He never gave a power or a right that is 
so much confused and absurd that it could not be executed. No man can 
govern that which he does not so much as know what it is, where it came 
from, or how it is to be executed. No pope or body of ministers ever knew 
the world, or could govern it. The position of the pope is the more con- 
sistent in assuming to usurp the religious government of the whole world, if 
he has any right at all, than those who assume the right to carve up the 
Lord's heritage into bishoprics, conferences and synods, putting an ecclesi- 
astic over each, without a divine warrant therefor in God's word. Is there 



OE, THE COMMON" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 429 

any record where the apostles divided up the churches into conferences or 
synods after they were multiplied, and organizing or attempting to organize 
them into governments ? Was not one apostle pastor over one local church, 
as at Jerusalem, and one over another, as at Corinth ? When or where did 
one of them ever undertake to rule over them all, except those of them 
being divinely inspired to write to the churches, giving them laws and 
wholesome advice ? Did not Paul say. What have I to do to judge them that 
ar3 ivithout f It were a shame for poor, weak, short-sighted man to set up a 
human contrivance, disjointed and all out of proportion, and void of order, 
and without a covenant or the consent of those to be governed, and at the 
same time being guilty of the blasphemy of imputing to Christ such a form 
of government as would be a reproach to his gospel and bring confusion into 
the Christian world. All such governments strive to make all ecclesiastical 
power dependent upon and to emanate from the ministry. While all essen- 
tial, practical religious liberty, like the gospel itself, loves the light of com- 
mon sense and plain, practical experience. All ecclesiastical absolutism 
loves mystery — the mystery of some divine right. Popes, cardinals and 
bishops wrap themselves in it. But there is no mystery about the govern- 
ment of a local church by its own members. The membership of a local 
church means an aggregate of human beings, to each of whom is denied any 
diviue right, and to each of whom w^e justly inscribe frailties, and the possi- 
bility of subordinating their judgment to passion and sometimes malice. 
Each one of them separately stands in need of moderating and protecting 
laws, and all of them unitedly as much as the individual. 

But, say our protestant friends, depose the pope, Peter's pretended suc- 
cessor, and divide up his power into diocesan bishoprics, conferences and 
general assemblies, and give us that power that is but an usurped dominion 
in the pope, and we ourselves will dominate the churches of Christ. They 
contend that if Peter was made pope, Christ forgot to leave any instructions 
as to who his successor should be, and how he was to be known and chosen ; 
besides, they say that it is foolishness to seek for that which cannot be 
found. But how are these lordly Episcopalians, Methodists and Presbyterians 
going to find out their rights to govern and rule, since the Scriptures are as 
silent as to how their rulers should be selected, as it is as to how the pope 
should rule ? Our Catholic friends say that the Scriptures are quite clear ; 
that the cardinals assembled at Kome have the right to elect Peter's succes- 
sors, and that it is likev/ise clear from the same law as to how they shall be 
invested with supreme power to rule. But where in the holy record have 
they any authority to divide up the pope's power, and do the business of a 
pope at a different stand and in a little different way ? When they prove 
that their rights in themselves are clearly deducible from the law of the gos- 
pel, and that each ruler is entitled to the parcel of the pope's power he enjoys, 
then they can lay some claim to ecclesiastical government. Let them search 
the Scriptures to see whether the inspired apostles ever met and fixed, by pre- 
cept or example, the exact amount of power each ruler should exert, and how 
the Christian world should be divided up, and how each ruler should be seated 



430 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

in his ecclesiastical chair. Nay, verily, it were better to let the pope alone 
set up this absurd claim, and they all be no longer protestants, but return 
to the simplicity of the gospel plan of church government ; since it is no 
less ridiculous to try to deduce a right from the pope that has none, than to 
expect pure and wholesome waters from a polluted and poisonous fountain. 

If this pretended right to govern the churches be divided up and placed 
elsewhere than in the local churches, it concerns us to know by whom, when, 
how, and to "whom Christ gave it ; for the division cannot be of any value, 
and has no divine sanction, unless it be ordered by Christ originally, or by 
his apostles, in settiug up and putting in action the apostolic churches, and 
that they did exercise this right in making the division ; and that the 
ecclesiastical parcels into which the Christian world is divided are according 
to the allotment that the apostles made, and that the persons claiming them, 
by virtue of a divine law, are the true personages to whom they were first 
granted. But if the dominion of the whole Christian world cannot belong 
to any one man, or to a set of ecclesiastics, and every one of Christ's freemen 
have an equal title in him who has a right to give it ; or, if it did belong to 
one, or to a few, it is certain from the Scriptures, no one man, as Peter, or set 
of men, as the apostles, ever exercised it in governing or in dividing it ; or if 
they divided it, no man knows how, when, or to ivhom. So that they who 
lay claim to any parcel of it can give no better title to it than the pope who 
claims the whole lump, to whom he says it was granted at first ; and that 
we have neither a word, nor a promise of a word, from Christ or his apostles 
to decide the controversies arising between these protestants and papists 
concerning the seat of ecclesiastical power. 

We may then justly conclude that Christ having never given the whole 
Christian world to be governed by one man, nor prescribed any rule for 
dividing it, nor declared where the right of dividing, or sub-dividing should 
begin, or terminate, we may safely afiirm that the w^hole matter of ecclesias- 
tical government is left where we see it in the apostolic churches ; that is to 
say, in the local church. That all believers may enter, form and continue in 
greater or lesser organic local churches, as best suits and pleases ourselves. 
The right to dominate the churches we cannot say, is at an end, because it 
never commenced by any one who had a right to institute a permanent 
government over them all. And as it is impossible to transmit these rights by 
inheritance or succession, so it is impossible to transfer the benefits arising 
from them. The words of the apostle. If we are children, ive are therefore 
heirs, and co-heirs with Christ, are alike the voice of God and nature ; and 
as the universal law of God and nature is always the same, every one of us 
who belong to the church of Christ have the same right in the government 
of his churches. And that supreme right which was not devolved to any one 
of them, but inherited by us all by virtue of our discipleship, is also inherited 
by every one of us that are believers. But if that which could be inherited 
was inherited by all, and it is impossible that a right of government over the 
churches can be due to every one, then all that is, or can be, inherited by 
every one is, that exemption from the dominion of another which Baptists 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 431 

call religious liberty, wMch is the gift of God. Such an organization of the 
church is hostile to independent ministerial princely power. It tends to 
subject the minister, and ministerial authority to the church. It makes 
ministerial power an office, instead of resolving it into a sovereignty retaining 
in its grasp the supreme power of the church, thus furnishing the objective 
reality upon which ecclesiastical science can rest in the construction of a 
truly scientific ecclesiastical system. All other forms contain the germ of a 
priestly despotism, which, instead of being a blessing to the world, has been 
its greatest curse. For under the old law we could not, yet now we may 
exercise that freedom wherewith Christ has made us free. For to submit 
the conscience in faith or practice to the power of a privileged class of 
ecclesiastics, is to betray our Christian liberty. Christ having set us free 
from all the bondage of the law which God himself made and gave to Moses, 
would not take off, and relieve us from the laws of God and the dominion of 
the Jewish priesthood and impose upon us the laws of men. 

It is certain that we ought not to speak lightly of so divine an institution 
as that of the ministry without great care and deliberation, for we might lay 
down that for the law of the gospel which the Scriptures might not warrant. 
But this much may be said of an institution of Christ. When a thing is 
instituted by Christ it does not thereby equal an universal commandment, 
but obtains the force of a precept, according to the subject matter, and its 
apparent relations. Thus when Christ instituted the office of a Christian 
minister he did not by that institution oblige every man to enter upon its 
duties. Baptist church jurisprudence requires that ecclesiastical government 
shall not form an order of the clergy permanently and essentially separate 
from the membership ; all modern systems of church polity have resorted to 
a number of distinctions, such as high-sounding titles, orders, red caps, white 
gowns, black gowns, uniforms, or whatever other means of separating 
individuals from the membership at large may seem expedient. True 
church government spurns, and has a peculiar dislike of all such distinctions. 
The law of the gospel and arbitrary ministerial power are at eternal enmity. 
It is such as the apostles never exercised over the primitive churches, and is 
a contradiction in terms, it is blasphemy in religion, and downright wicked- 
ness in ecclesiastical government to say that any priest or bishop can have 
arbitrary power. Baptists teach that churches and their members are 
instituted to be governed by the law of the gospel ; and he that will 
substitute the rule of one man, or a few,* in the place of it, is an enemy to 
God ; it is not only pernicious to those whom it subjects, but it works its own 
destruction. 

But if we consider the manner of the institution of this sacred office, it is 
certainly a perfect, unalterable and universal commandment. For though 
every man in every circumstance is not by virtue of this institution obliged 
to enter upon the ministry except the Holy Spirit calls him, yet if he does 
enter it, by the institution, he is tied up strictly to the letter of the law, that 
under no circumstance can he go beyond the measures and limits of the 
divine law. He that enters it must do so by the strict laws of the New 



432 A TKEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUPvCH JURISPRUDEXCE ; 

Testament, and no other. The reason is, because a divine institution is the 
whole cause and entire beginning, and the whole warrant of the ministerial 
state, and of the action of those who enter it ; and, therefore, whatsoever is 
otherwise contrary to the institution is not from God, but from ourselves. So 
that although the institution of this sacred office does not compel one to 
undertake it nolens volens, yet in all cases it obliges one who does undertake 
it, to do it in the manner appointed by Christ. / have received of the Lord 
ihat which also I delivered unto you; that is, whatsoever I did nOt receive 
from the Lord, whatsoever was not of his institution, I have the power to 
dispose of, but not anything which he appointed. 

Now, v^hen we look abroad in the Christian world and see men exercisins: 
a rule over the churches and filling high places in the various ecclesiastical 
systems of the land, and then look into the Scriptures to find a divine war- 
rant therefor, and see no resemblance between the apostolic system and these 
lordly politic communities, we conclude that great violence has been done 
to Christ's institution ; and that the churches and their government in the 
hands of these people are as the potter's clay to be moulded in whatsoever 
shape they please. E-ead the epistles general of Peter to the early converts 
to Chriistianity, and we find not an allusion to his supremacy over the min- 
istry, and not a hint in his writings that Christ had erected a papacy or an 
episcopacy to rule over the churches. This was certainly an opportune 
time for him to have defined his powers and his duties if he had been in- 
vested with such authority, as some contend. For this whole dispute whether 
Christ left any jurisdiction to Peter, as the first pope, must be gathered from 
the Scriptures. For jurisdiction is the power of ruling, which never was 
exercised in its true meaning, except by the local churches. The supreme 
power to rule includes the power to make laws, and with the sword of justice 
to compel men to obedience to those laws pronounced by the power that 
makes them, or by the judges appointed for that purpose. In what place in 
the Scriptures did Peter pretend to have such power ? 

For when Christ chose his ministry he gave them only the commission to 
preach, but not to judge of causes between man and man, or between church 
and church, for that is a power he never took upon himself, saying. Who 
made me a judge, or a divider amongst you f But he that has no power to 
hear and determine causes, between man and man, and no power to judge, 
cannot be said to exercise any jurisdiction at all. If Christ gave them not 
this power, they have it not inherently in themselves, nor can they derive 
it from the laws of nature A divine institution is something set up by 
Christ, with an efficacy beyond the nature of the thing itself. Any one man 
to rule, and have the divine right to rulcj must have it in express words 
given him in the Scriptures, but cannot take it by intendment, whereby they 
are capable of commanding and compelling obedience as a natural govern- 
ment ; and any supreme pastor to make himself capable of ruling the whole 
universal church wants three things that our Saviour has not given him : 
that is, the power to command, to judge and to punish ; neither one of which 
powers did Peter in the true sense of government ever exercise or pretend 
to exercise. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 433 

But how is it that such distorted notions of the office of the Christian min- 
istry could spring from the simple institution of the apostolic churches, as we 
now see them reflected in the Scriptures ? How that Christians professing a 
loyalty to God and his word could suffer such encroachments upon ecclesias- 
tical government, and the ministerial office, and how these pernicious errors 
first crept in, to the complete per.version and overthrow of Christ's churches, 
is a marvel. One can see, cui bono, what good might be expected to result 
to the ministry in those times when these errors first started, but how that 
the membership who could not be profited thereby, could suffer them to be 
intruded into the church, cannot be understood. For without the authority 
at first of the membership of the churches there could have been no such 
seditious doctrines publicly preached. 

In the beginning, as in Baptist churches of to-day, it was by simplicity, 
humility, sincerity, wisdom and the other sterling virtues of the apostles, 
that the true witnesses and followers of Christ were enabled to preserve and 
keep pure the churches, as we find them to-day in the Scriptures. But in 
the course of time those ministers, to whom Christ had given no power but 
to preach and teach the gospel as the churches increased, assembled in 
council to consider what they should teach, and thereby obliging them- 
selves to teach nothing against the legislative decrees of their councils, made 
it to be thought that the membership were thereby obliged to follow their 
self-made doctrine, and when they refused to subscribe thereto, they were 
punished as disobedient. Then the ministers of the church of the chief city 
usurped and got themselves authority over the less pretentious ministers, and 
appropriated to themselves the names of bishops. And, finally, the bishop 
of Rome likewise usurped, and took upon himself an authority over all the 
other bishops of the empire. The ambition and canvassing for the offices 
belonging to this distorted power, and especially for that great office of 
being Christ's lieutenant on earth, became, by degrees, so evident that they 
soon lost the inward reverence due the ministerial function and the divine 
institution of the church. Whereas, the first law which protects, directs and 
renders useful the love of ministerial power in church government, should 
leave to the people the choice of the person to whom any portion of minis- 
terial authority is to be confided. The necessity of such a law is evident. 
Admitting that every minister serves his church or his denomination from 
the rewards it offi^rs him, that the love of power is the first object of his 
hopes, and that the different degrees of authority conferred on him are the 
equivalent for his services, it follows that when a part of the ministry is 
either wholly or partially excluded from these rights the ministry will be di- 
vided into two classes, one of which has but little interest in the churches, 
and the other, every inducement to serve them. This erroneous principle 
is the basis of Catholicism, Episcopalianism and Methodism, which once 
being removed, lays the foundations of ministerial equality ; without which 
religious liberty will be always timid from being under restrictions, and 
always languid because oppressed with the weight of its fetters. 

In the primitive times of the churches there was no such ecclesiastical 
28 



434 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

hierarchy, because it was the very basal rock of Christianity that the min- 
istry should in themselves have no power over the churches or over the con- 
sciences of men, but the word of God itself, working faith in every one. 
The Scriptures nowhere teach that there was any one universal church here 
on earth which had coercive authority to govern all Christians on earth, no 
more than was an universal nation or king that had a right to govern all 
mankind. We repeat, that church government differs not, so far as its 
organization is concerned, in any material particular from any other gov- 
ernment by institution. Whatever authority is acquired is gotten by cove- 
nant, and by the consent of many men together, in which they precisely set out 
what they agree to do, and make known by what right one man may acquire 
dominion over many, if such dominion be permissible. For when one man 
has dominion over another, there is set up a little kingdom. But at no time 
or place, known to the Scriptures, have all churches or Christians assembled 
together, either in person or by representation, and by covenants of subjec- 
tion, resolved themselves into a church universal, and acknowledged one 
man or several men for their rulers. If the local churches, in the begin- 
ning, never thus assembled and entered such a covenant of subjection, who- 
ever undertakes to rule them is but an usurper : in which case there would 
be two distinct persons, the one who would be a pretended sovereign, called 
by himself the master, the other would be the subject, called the slave. For 
he is a slave who is owned by another, and when the ruler or the pope had 
thus acquired authority over a number of slaves, this body politic would be 
nothing more than a kingdom, secular and despotical, organized after the 
carnal ways of the world. In the primitive, as in our Baptist form of 
church government, there is but one sovereign body, the church itself, with 
but one ruler, Christ himself, who rules by his Spirit, and who, while on 
earth, accepted not a forced, but a willing obedience. 

We see nothing in Scripture, of precept or example, that is not utterly 
abhorrent to this chimera. If God had constituted a lord paramount in 
church government, with an absolute power, and multitudes of nations were 
to labor and fight for his greatness and pleasure as they have done, this were 
to raise his heart to a height that would make him even forget that he was 
a man. Such as have studied the question of church government, not only 
know that it neither agrees with the letter or spirit of the Scriptures, but it 
is unreasonable in itself. The exaltation of such a being is incompatible 
with the genius of apostolic church government, to say nothing of the pride 
that always attends the elevation of one man above another. It is no less 
incredible with God who disposes all things in wisdom and goodness, and 
appointed a due place for all his ministers without distinction. The wise, the 
humble and the pious would refrain, and the ignorant and arrogant cannot 
Scripturally take upon them the burden of it without blasphemy, and with- 
out subjecting the Christian world to all the absurdities and mischiefs attend- 
ing such a subversion of apostolic church government. 

It was by degrees that this usurpation began in the primitive churches, 
and when once begun those ministers who were thus inclined to extend their 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 435 

power and influence, were forced to follow the herd as soon as they began to 
expect a power which the Scriptures do not confer upon them. Men, even 
minister:?, are of an aspiring nature, and apt to put too high a value upon 
themselves ; they who are raised above their brethren, though but a little, 
desire to go further, and if they gain the name of a bishop, a cardinal, or a 
pope, they think themselves wrouged and degraded when they are not suf- 
fered to do Avhat they please. And the nearer they come to a power that is 
not easily restrained and hedged in by the divine Scriptures, the more pas- 
sionately they desire to down all that oppose it. And no greater testimony 
can be given of the effects we see of them than in the history of the world, 
since these perverted ideas became rooted in the minds of men. And it can- 
not be said that many ministers are so rich in piety and all the Christian 
virtues as not to desire more power than the gospel allows. This may be 
and is somtftimes the case, but such men are hard to find, and more than 
gospel laws are required to keep them within due bounds and limits. He 
has not searched into the nature of man who thinks that he can resist such 
blandishments of power ; nothing but the wonderful and immediate power of 
the Holy Spirit can preserve him ; but it cannot be claimed that the Holy 
Spirit is with those who thus distort and destroy ecclesiastical power ; for 
whenever it is thus destroyed it ceases to be a divine institution and has no 
divine efficacy in it, and whatever else it is, it is not a church of Christ. 

One of the evil consequences arising from this construction of the powers of 
the Christian ministry, is that the churches have not the right to select their 
own pastors, but that this right belongs to the bishops as such. In all well 
regulated secular governments, as in the United States, where any regard to 
the rights of the people is paid, the appointing power is in the President and 
the Senate ; the president nominating and the Senate confirming. But in 
many of these church governments the bishop has the sole right to appoint 
and the power to suspend a minister. The consequence has been precisely 
such as might have been expected, a severe contest for the possession of that 
power, as in the Methodist church, and the ultimate usurpation of it by that 
department of the government to which it ought never to be entrusted. It 
is true that it would seem that the power to remove a minister ought to 
attend the power to appoint ; for those whose duty it is to fill the offices of 
the churches with competent incumbents, cannot possibly execute that trust 
fully and well, unless they have power to correct their own errors and 
mistakes, by removing the unworthy, and substituting better men in their 
places. But this does not argue anything in favor of entrusting this 
enormous power to the hands of one man. In the Methodist church for a 
long time it was strenuously contended for by a large part of the laity, and 
was finally yielded, rather to the confidence they reposed in the virtues of 
their bishops, than to the conviction that it was properly a ministerial pDwer 
belonging only to the bishop. But even if it were otherwise what would it 
avail that the church must be consulted in appointing a minister to office, 
if the bishop may, the very next moment, annul the act by removing or 
suspending the person appointed ? The church has no right to select ; they 



436 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

can do nothing more than meekly submit to the person sent them. The 
bishop maj appoint his own devoted creatures; if the church should 
disapprove of them they have no redress, but must endure as best they can 
for two or four years. And when the appointment is made the fortunate 
incumbent knows that he is the mere tenant at will, and necessarily becomes 
the veritable tool and subject of the man at whose sole pleasure he eats his 
daily bread. Surely this is a great and alarming defect in the Methodist 
discipline, that so vast and dangerous a power as this should be held by one 
man. Nothing more is required to place the liberties and the whole 
government of the churches at the feet of the bishop, than to authorize him 
to fill, and to vacate, and fill again, at his sole will and pleasure, all the 
oflSces in his bishopric. The object of ministerial equality is to unite all 
Christian people in a church system, where every advantage may be enjoyed 
by all. Every such ecclesiastical barrier should be destroyed. All distinc- 
tions between one minister and another are absurd, and ought to be rejected ; 
they are the fatal remains of ancient Judaism, of priestcraft, always destruc- 
tive to religious liberty, but now disgraceful and dishonoring to God, in an 
age that believes itself, what, in fact, ought to be — enlightened. 

The necessary consequence of enabling the bishop to appoint to and 
suspend from office at his mere pleasure is, that the appointee soon learns to 
consider himself the minister of the bishop, and not of the church. The 
nature of his responsibility is changed ; he answers not to the membership 
for his conduct, for he is beyond their reach ; he looks only to the bishop, 
and is satisfied with his approval, and is regardless of everything else. In 
fact, his charge, as it is called, however important or obscure it may be, 
soon comes to be considered only a part of the great executive power lodged 
in the bishop. The bishop fills the office of presiding elder, the metropolitan 
pulpit and the common circuit riders various pulpits ; and the incumbents of 
those offices are but his agents, through whom, for the sake of convenience, 
he exercises so much of his gigantic powers. The bishop has long since 
learned to say : " This eldership and these important charges are a part of 
the great executive trust which is lodged in me ; I have a right to discharge 
it in person if I please, and, consequently, I have a right to discharge it by 
my own agent, and to have it done in my own way." Who does not 
perceive that the claims which have already been made in behalf of the 
power of the bishops upon this system of ecclesiastical government must of 
necessity change the whole nature and spirit of apostolic-ecclesiastical 
institutions? Their fundamental principle is, that all power is in the 
membership, and that church officers nre . but their trustees and under- 
shepherds, responsible to them for the execution of their trusts. And yet 
there is, in effect, no responsibility whatever. The dissatisfied and disap- 
pointed member can make his complaint only to the bishop, and the bishop's 
creature knows that he is perfectly secure of his protection, because he has 
already purchased it by a humiliating subserviency. Is it enough that the 
bishop is responsible ? If so, responsible for what ? Will you impeach or 
remove the bishop because his creature does not come up to the standard of 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 437 

a man and minister of God ? There is absurdity in the very idea. He will 
tell you that, according to the construction which has been placed upon 
ministerial power, and in which they themselves have acquiesced, that matter 
depends solely on his will, and you have no right to punish him for what the 
discipline authorizes him to do. And when the matter is brought to an 
issue, the bishop gravely tells them that his agents have abused the trust, and 
not he. And when they call on those agents to ansAver they impudently 
reply that it is no concern of theirs, they will answer to the bishop. Thus 
powers may be multiplied and abused without end, and the membership, the 
real sovereigns, the real depositories of all power, can neither check nor 
punish them. Hence this system of church government is incompatible with 
religious liberty as Baptists love it. It is absolutism which exists whenever 
ecclesiastical power, unmitigated, undivided and unchecked, is in the hands 
of any one man. It is the opposite to religious freedom ; it is the negation 
of protection ; protection in its highest sense is an essential element of 
religious liberty. It is needless to remind Baptists that religious liberty has 
been lost quite as often from false gratitude toward a personally popular 
bishop, a cardinal, or a pope, as from any other reason. 

It matters not how such a ruler may be raised up. He may be either ap- 
pointed or elected by the membership. It does not change the principle and 
will be none the less unscriptural. Baptists, in their free system of govern- 
ment, would have no more authority to elect a pastor to rule the church by 
his own arbitrary will than a Methodist conference has to elect a bishop to 
lord it over the churches. Of all power, especially popular power, by which 
we mean the unscriptural sway of the multitude, is the most dangerous, be- 
cause it is not borrowed, and is the most deceptive because in most cases it 
is led or handled by one man or by a few. Hence power is not religious 
liberty and does not secure or insure the stability of church government. It 
is true it is necessary for the protection of the government, and it consists in 
a great measure in the protection of certain rights ; but nevertheless power 
is not religious liberty, and because it is power it requires checks and limita- 
tions, and it is necessary to prevent the generation of a still more dangerous 
power. The bishop and the priest are the central force of the universal 
church. They are the incarnation of the popular power, and if any of the 
smaller men should happen to indicate an opinion of their own, they are 
really given to understand that the clergy are in fact the church. They 
assume to be the church, and whoever dissents from them is an enemy to the 
church. Their divine right to rule the church is the voice of God, which 
speaks in the voice of the church. Such bodies cannot, of course, be called 
churches of Christ, for they are devoid of independence and every element 
of self-government. The question m these cases is not whether they love 
religious liberty, but simply whether they love power. They do not look 
beyond the single measure, nor to the means by which it is carried out ; yet 
the Scripturalness of these means are of greater importance than the measure 
itself, forgetting that the levies, so to speak, of apostolic church government 
once being broken through, the whole system may be soon flooded by an 
irresistible tide of arbitrary power. 



438 A THEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUKCH JTTRISPEUDENCE ; 

Whatever can be said by those beloDging to the Papal, Episcopal and 
Presbyterian forms of church goverament in opposition to these apostolic 
examples, seems to proceed from a groundless conceit that the powers exer- 
cised by popes and bishops arise not from the church, but by reason of their 
ordination at the hands of pseudo-ecclesiastics. But it is not possible for 
one minister, made such under the same conditions with the rest of his 
brethren, can have a right in himself that is not common to all others, until 
it can be shown that they have a right to confer a superior authority, the one 
upon another. How is it that a set of ministers without the utmost ab- 
surdity can be said to grant ecclesiastical powers to a man greater than they 
have themselves, and which does not reside in the church itself? But our 
friends contend that they have been led into this extravagant idea, about the 
office of a Christian minister, by the terms used in patents and charters 
granted to particular men ; and not distinguishing between Christ the giver 
and the church the dispenser of these powers, they have been led to think 
that they really have the authority to give as their own, that which was never 
given them by a grant or charter from Christ. This cannot be denied by 
any who considers that no set of men can confer upon others that which they 
have not themselves. If popes and bishops be originally no more than other 
ministers, they cannot grant to them, or to any one of them, more^than they 
have themselves. One is your master ^ even Christ; and all ye are brethren. 

Now it is evident that all cannot inherit ministerial dominion, for the 
right of one would be inconsistent with that of all the others. The right 
which is common to all ministers, properly called and ordained, is that 
which w^e call liberty and ministerial equality ; or, rather, it is exemption 
from dominion. It is quite certain that the very first ministers under the 
gospel dispeusation, including the apostles, neither had nor exercised any 
ecclesiastical power in themselves, only in so far as they were ministers of 
the local churches, for Paul said, What have I to do to judge those without? 
And whatever authority they had was uniform, and devolved to every one 
alike. If Peter was the first pope, and Titus the first bishop, they must not 
have been aware of it, for they never pretended to exercise any power over 
the churches or over their brethren, such as w^e now see exercised by these 
post-apostolic saints, but they w^ere all equal. Some of those ministers, not 
made such immediately by Christ, for example, Paul himself, although the 
most active of all the first ministers, exercised no ecclesiastical power beyond 
his preaching, teaching and planting of new churches. Taking the example 
of these early ministers, seeing that none of them seemed to exercise more 
power than the others, if they were popes, bishops or ruling elders, there 
would now be in the world as many of these dignitaries as there are true 
ministers extant in the world ; that is, no one minister would or could be 
above another, and no minister could be ruled by another, and it is certain 
the churches would not be dominated by them. This ministerial equality 
of right and exemption from being ruled over, is what Baptists have ever 
contended for, and he who enjoys it cannot be deprived of it, not even by his 
own consent : that no church can elevate one minister above another, or if 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 439 

it did, it could confer no right upon hii^ inherent in himself as a ruler, and 
that a church consenting to be ruled by a minister, confers upon him no 
ecclesiastical power. 

For there are many things a church may, and must do, but there are 
likewise many things it cannot do. One of these is to make a man a pope, 
or bishop with power to rule over them, whether willing to be ruled by them 
or not. All this is clear from the Scriptures, as seen in the examples of 
every church planted by the apostles and evangelists. Besides if the Jews 
would choose a king, God commanded them to take one of their brethren, 
not one who has assumed to be a ruler. When they resolved to have one, 
as those who believe in these high ecclesiastical dignitaries, resolved to have 
them, he commanded them to choose him by lot, as Matthias, Paul, Barna- 
bas and all the other early ministers were chosen, and caused the lot to fall 
on Barnabas. All that these popes, and bishops have, therefore, is from their 
elevation, and their elevation is from those that elevated them. 

If any should be so vain as to think that Christ by a grant of power to Peter, 
he elevated him to the throne of the papal see of Eome, which place he 
never saw in his life, and there be nothing in his conduct that indicates that 
he exercised the power conferred, we must infer that after his demise, those 
stepping into his pontifical shoes began to raise themselves by degrees and 
by their bootstraps, above the common herd of his brethren. And that if 
any one of them did so, it cannot without madness be ascribed to Peter, nor 
to the apostles, all of whom were but humble ministers of the gospel, for 
they all seemed to have as much title to dominion over their brethren and 
over the churches, or the means of attaining it, as any other true ministers 
of this day. This must be true in all times and places unless the present pope 
could prove by a perfect and uninterrupted genealogy, that he is the divine 
personage in the line of Peter, and that line to have continued perpetually 
in the government of the Christian world. For if Christ left no example or 
precept, as to how Peter's successor should be elected or known, or if the 
ministerial power was in fact divided equally between Peter and all 
other ministers, as they all used it equally, it may be sub-divided into 
infinity, and if inherited, the pontifical chain is long since broken, and is 
but a mythical whimsy, and can never be made whole. 

It is ridiculous to pretend a right that belongs to no minister, or to go 
about to defend a right that lay dormant during the whole lifetime and ser- 
vice of the apostles, and has been quiescent for these eighteen hundred 
years. This leads us necessarily to the conclusion, that all ministers are 
equal in power "and authority, and at first were created by the consent and 
approval of the local churches, and was given to whom they please, or else 
all are set up by force and usurpation, or some by consent, and some by 
force and usurpation. If any are setup by the consent of the churches, as 
are all Baptist ministers, they do not confer liberties and privileges upon 
the churches, but receive all from the churches. Matthias was elected by 
the church at Jerusalem, that he may take part of this ministry andapostle- 
shijp. The logical conclusion is that had he not been thus elected he could 



440 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

not have Lad or taken any part in that ministry and apostleship, for 
Christ, the appointing power, had already been taken up into heaveu, and 
left all matters of that nature to the local churches. If this conclusion can 
be refuted, those who do so must prove that ail ministers of the world have 
their beginning from usurpation, and that usurpation always creates a 
right; or if they recede from that general proposition, and attribute a 
peculiar right to popes and bishops who are absolute lords of the churches, 
and that all under them have neither Christian liberty nor any part in the 
government of the churches but by their concessions, and therefore that 
these church dignitaries gained by usurpation the power they have, and 
their right to govern the churches is derived from it. 

But if the power of these pseudo-ecclesiastics be a mere spectacular extrava- 
ganza, that has no place in Bible jurisprudence, and that no church was ever 
commanded by Christ to make it their rule of action, nor any reproved for 
neglecting it, none ever learned it from any of the analogies deducible from 
the Scriptures under the gospel dispensation. The apostles, nor the evan- 
gelists claimed any privileges from it when their power was equal, and if 
there be such a thiug as a natural pope, or bishop, it could be of no use now 
when there are so many ministers in the world both true and false, that not 
one in the world can prove whether he has come down by divine succession 
from the original. And that the first churches, whether well or illy consti- 
tuted, according to the command of Christ, or the invention of men, were 
contrary to and incompatible with it. 

If there be, therefore, or ever was any true church government extant in 
the world it was instituted by those entering the organization, or if there was 
ever any true minister of the gospel ordained in the world they were made 
such in the manner and after the examples laid down in the Holy Scriptures, 
and the powers annexed to that ministry were the donations of Christ and 
the churches that made them to be ministers. 

Truth being uniform in itself those who desire to propagate it for the good 
of mankind, lay the foundations of their reasonings in such principles as are 
either evident to common sense or else easily proved. But those who have a 
weak cause delighting in obscurity suppose things that are dubious or false, 
and think to build one false premise upon another ; and, therefore, those 
who believe in the authority of popes and bishops, persuade us that all eccle- 
siastical power was by Christ vested in them from the beginning before even 
the planting of the churches. 

K there were such a thing in ecclesiastical law as a natural or a divine 
pope to rule the world, and a bishop to rule a whole city or state, and that 
the right must go by descent and succession, it would be impossible for any 
other man to acquire it, or for any one to confer it upon them, and to give 
authoriry to the acts of those, who neither is, nor can be, a pope or bishop, 
which belongs only to those who have the right inherent in themselves and 
inseparable from them. For the essence of a pope or bishop consists in the 
lawfulness and validity of their acts. And it is equally absurd for one to 
pretend to be a pope or a bishop whose acts are unscriptural and invalid. 



OS, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 441 

If it is possible to prove that these usurpers of ecclesiastical powers hold 
not their authority by divine right, and that they came to be possessed of it 
by the perauadon of those who would elevate them thus above their breth- 
ren, they who at first were thus persuaded were doubtless persuaded to con- 
sent that they should be popes and bishops. That consent, therefore, made 
them popes and bishops. But they who at firbt made them popes and 
bishops made them such popes and bishops as best pleased themselves. They 
had, therefore, nothing but what was given them ; their greatness and power 
must at last be not from Christ, but from those who gave it, and their au- 
thority could not be in themselves, but inherently in those who made them 
what they pretend to be. We know of a certainty that there was a people 
who were members of a local church at Jerusalem, that made the first min- 
ister under the gospel dispensation, not including the apostles, who were made 
apostles by Christ himself. The story is short, but exceedingly interesting. 
In the first chapter of Acts we read: And they appointed two, Joseph^ called 
Barnabas, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, Thou Lord, which 
knowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these two Thou hast chosen, that 
he may take part of this ministry and apostleship. And they gave forth their 
lots ; and the lot fell upon Matthias ; and he was numbered with the apostles. 
This election by the local church was to fill the vacant apostleship made so 
by Judas' treachery. Likewise we learn in the thirteenth chapter of the 
Acts how the church at Antioch identically the same way elected and set 
apart Paul and Barnabas to the work of the ministry. These are the very 
first examples of the call and election of ministers, and were the acts of the 
local churclies of which they were members, and not the act of Peter nor the 
acts of the eleven, otherwise than as members of those churches. These are 
divine examples, and any man who assumes to enter the sacred office of the 
ministry in any other way than therein pointed out, can be but an usurper, 
for the authority by which these first ministers became what they were could 
not be from themselves, but from Christ and the churches, who set them 
apart. Their ministry, therefore, was from them, and depended upon 
their will. 

These very earliest churches having been planted by the apostles were so 
fully convinced that in the creation of a minister they exercised their own 
right and w^ere only to ask the Holy Spirit to guide them and to point out 
to them whom to elect, and were to consider what was good for the cause 
and themselves, and that without foreign interference. They were accustomed 
to take such as seemed most likely to perform their office, and to refuse those 
whom they did • not want as they did Joseph, for IMatthias received more 
votes than he, and, therefore, was the choice of the church. Which we take 
to be a manner of proceeding that agrees better with the quality of freemen, 
making ministers for themselves, than of subjects recei^ang such as were 
imposed upon them by a pope, or college of bishops, or elders. Now what 
excuse can there be for a departure from these examples, and for transferring 
the power the church always exercised in those primitive times to other 
hands that have no right to use it ? If these rules and examples were given 



442 A TREATISE VTOliJ BAPTIST CHUKCH JURISPRTIDENCE ; 

by Cliiist it must have Leen from the beginniDg universal, and will be 
perpetual to the end of the world. 

No minister of this day and generation can be a successor to the apostles, 
endowed with their power and authority, for all of them held their appoint- 
ment from Christ, except Matthias, whom the Holy Spirit directed should be 
chosen to fill the office made vacant by the treachery of Judas. Taking it 
for granted that they held the empire of the churches, during their official 
lives, by the will and appointment of Christ, their offices can belong to no 
minister, or set of ministers, who came after them, because the mantles w^hich 
they laid down came not to their possession by inheritance. If so, how, 
when, and where? How did their authority come to be divided without 
such an injury to the universal church, whatever that is, as can never be 
repaired ? They who place all ecclesiastical power in a multitude of Chris- 
tians, which multitude, whether it be great or small, have not all ecclesias- 
tical power, because ten men organized into a Baptist church are as free and 
as powerful as ten millions ; and though it may be more prudent in some 
cases to join with the greater than the smaller number, because there is more 
strength, it is not always so, because we see no great multitude of Christians 
in the primitive times so joined together for government ; but every man 
must therein be his own judge, since, if he mistakes, the hurt is to^himself ; 
and the ten may as justly resolve to live together in a church capacity, and 
oblige themselves to the laws of the gospel as the greatest number of 
Christians that ever met together in the world. But we cannot find a more 
perfect picture of Christian freemen living together according to their own 
will, under the instruction of the apostles, than the local churches in the 
days of the apostles. All these churches might have banded together, as do 
post-apostolic sects, to choose and ordain popes, bishops, and ruling elders, 
but they did not ; and in their^failure to do so we find no shadow of despotic 
ecclesiastical dominion, effected by one or many, as rulers, or successors to the 
apostles ; but all apostles, including ministers, made after them, lived together 
in that fraternal equality, which, according to the instruction of Christ, they 
ought to have done. There was no high priest, subordinate, or vassal ; there 
was no strife among them for the supremacy, they were brethren, they might 
live together, or separate into independent churches and be independent 
ministers as they found it convenient for themselves under the free laws of 
the gospel. 

Each church had its own bishop, which was the common name for a 
pastor. Whether these pastors were elective in the apostolic period, or was 
transmitted by succession or hereditary right, is one of the contested ques- 
tions in church government. The latter was hot the ancient theory of the 
office. Indeed we have positive examples in the apostolic times of the elec- 
tion of these officers, notably that of Matthias, Barnabas and Paul. A 
change so great and radical, affecting the independence and personal 
rights of all the members of the churches, requires positive proofs, in view 
of these examples, to override the presumption against it Hereditary right 
to this office, or the right of one man to be appointed to it, carrrying with it 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 443 

authority over and obligations from the members of a churcli, is a very dif- 
ferent thing from an office bestowed by a free election, with the reserved 
power to depose for unworthy behavior. The very nature and genius of 
those free and independent churches forbids the supposition as to them that 
they had parted with a right so fundamental and vital to the independence 
of the members of those early churches. Hereditary or apostolic succession, 
if it existed amongst the minister.-^, would indicate a remarkable develop- 
ment of the aristocratical element in those early churches in derogation of 
that liberty wherewith Christ had made them free. All the ministry, includ- 
ing the apostles, were perfectly free and equal, and acknowledging the same 
in each other. We find religious liberty, equality and fraternity written as 
plainly in the constitution of those apostolic churches as can be. Heredi- 
tary right and appointment to the principal office in a church system is 
totally inconsistent with the ancient doctrine set out in the Bible concerning 
the churches of Christ, and cannot be indulged in except to round out a 
theory or to bolster up a system. 

It is usual, with those steeped in error, to obtrude their deceits upon men 
by putting false names upon things, by which they may dazzle men's minds, 
and from thence deduce false conclusions. Now of all that is said about 
the divine right of the ministry, nothing is more incomprehensible than what 
is meant by this phrase, to which all the perversion of the Scriptures is due, 
concerning the lawfulness of the power of the ministry. For lawful minis- 
ters are ministers by the law of the gospel. In being ministers by this law, 
they are such ministers as the law makes them, and that law only must tell 
us what is due to and from them, or else they are ministers by an universal 
higher law and right above and independent of the churches, to which no 
minister can have title, as before said, until he prove himself to be the right- 
ful heir by succession, coming down with an unbroken chain from the 
apostles, and along with it inheriting the authority to rule the churches. 
This chain, however, is broken when we consider that nowhere did the 
apostles pretend to exercise a rule over the primitive churches, except by 
their council, advice and admonition, and certainly not in the sense that 
bishops and other officers rule over the churches at this time. Hence, this 
overgrown power of the ministry must be imposed upon the churches by 
some other authority than the apostles. It is certain that this imposi- 
tion must be either by the law of the Gospel or by force. But laws in 
church jurisprudence are made to keep things in order without the neces- 
sity of force, for it would be a dangerous extravagance to arm with force 
the ministry, who, probably in a short time, as the history of the world has 
shown, must be opposed by force in order to keep them within the limits of 
the laws of the land. 

If usurpation can give aright to a minister, or set of ministers, to rule 
the churches in mass, why not to a local church to rule themselves? Or, 
rather, if Christ did in gross confer such a right to govern the churches upon 
them all, and they neither did, or can, meet together for the good of the 
whole, why should not Baptist churches that did and can meet together after 



444 A TREATISE UPOj^ BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

the exact examples cf the primitive churches, agree upon that which seems 
most expedient for the government of themselves ? Did Christ redeem man 
and place him under the necessity of wanting a hierarchical form of church 
government, and all the train of blessings they say proceed from it, because 
at the first, even in the very days of the apostles, all the cliurches did not, 
and afterwards all could not meet, to agree upon rules and rulers of this 
kind of government ? Or did Christ ever declare, or the apostles under 
Him, that unless they should use the first opportunity of dividing themselves 
into a diocese, and diocesan bishoprics, as were to remain unalterable, the 
right of ruling over them should fall upon the first audacious ecclesiastic 
that should dare attempt to do it ? Or, is it not more consonant to the 
wisdom and intention of Christ to leave to every local church, as he 
unquestionably did, a liberty of repairing the mischiefs fallen upon them 
through the supposed omission of Christ, and his contemporaries, the apos- 
tles, by setting up churches among themselves, than to lay them under the 
necessity of submitting to any that should insolently aspire to a rule and 
domination over them, as do popes, bishops and presbyters ? Or is it net 
more just and reasonable to believe, that the universal right to do these 
things, not being executed by Christ and his apostles, and that inasmuch as 
they set up common Kttle Baptist churches, that all ecclesiastical pawer w^as 
lodged in them, as members of a great religious commony/ealth, than that 
it should become the reward of an individual's fraud and usurpation? Or, 
is it possible, that any one man can make himself an ecclesiastical lord of a 
religious people, or a parcel of that body, to whom Christ has given the 
liberty of governing themselves by any other means than by usurpation, 
unless the apostles and the early churches under them did themselves will- 
ingly submit to such a dictator ? If this right to rule the churches did not 
devolve upon one man, is not the invasion of it the most outrageous injury 
that can be done to all the Christian world ? 

By this means any number of men, or so many as could conveniently 
meet together in one place at a time, agreeing together and framing a church 
under a covenant of faith and good w^orks, beconie a complete church, hav- 
ing all ecclesiastical power in themselves and over themselves, to call and 
ordain a minister, as the great apostle Paul was made one after the call of 
the Holy Spirit subject to no other human law than the Holy Scriptures. 
All those that compose the churches, being equally free to enter it, if found 
converted, no man or minister could have any prerogative above others ; 
and nothing obliging them to enter into these churches but the consider- 
ation of their o^Yn good and the good of the cause, that good must have 
been the rule, motive and end of all that they did ordain. It was lawful, 
therefore, for any such local churches to ordain their ministers, as they did 
these very first and greatest niinisters ever ordained by any church before or 
since, and he or they who are thus ordained, having no other power but 
what was thus conferred upon them by the Holy Spirit, and the churches, 
whether great or small are truly by them made what they are ; and by the 
law of their own creation, are to receive those powers, and those only, ac- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 445 

cording to the proportion, and to the ends for which they were given. These 
powers thus conferred upon ministers cannot be variously executed accord- 
ing to the various whims and caprices of the ministry in setting up a papacy, 
an episcpacy or a presbytery ; but they are to take the ecclesiastical govern- 
ment and control already set up as models of perfection, and confine the 
churches within the same. Ecclesiastical history has shown that these various 
systems have been good or evil, according to the nearness of their approach 
to the apostolic models, or according to the rectitude or probity of tlieir in- 
stitution, or the folly and vices of those to whom these perverted powers 
have been committed. But in Baptist church government the end which 
has been ever proposed, being the good of the churches only, they have 
erected their church polity and performed their duty who procured and 
maintained it according to the laws of the gospel which were equally valid 
to all of their ministers alike, whether they were few or many, great or small. 
Nor can the force of these arguments be avoided by the fiction of men's 
brains, that Christ gave this power to whole multitudes or to the ministry 
by a divine right and not to every particular church of Christ equally. 

If that which papists and protestants call a divine right elevates one 
minister above another, and puts them in high positions in the church, and 
the laws of the gospel regulate these matters, they might have been spared 
the pains of resorting to ecclesiastical legislation, to create these various 
ofiices, telling us exactly how these dignitaries shall be elected, when and by 
whom elected, and the tenure of their offices ; for an ecclesiastical sanction 
was unnecessary and of little force to confirm a perpetual and universal law 
given by Christ to his churches, and of no value against it, since man 
cannot abrogate what Christ has instituted. Baptists do not need such 
legislation to regulate the call and ordination of their ministry, taking the 
Scriptures alone for their guide. Never have they laid pen upon paper to 
define, augment or decrease the authority and power of the Christian 
ministry. They have never abused the Scriptures, nor followed the writings 
of the fathers of the church, whose opinions are to be valued only as far as 
they rightly interpret them, to build up a church hierarchy, in order to 
round out a theory, and to gratify the whims of a class of ofiicials which has 
no counterpart in the Scriptures. But we have already abundantly proved 
that the local churches, in the primitive times, called and elected their own 
ministry, which is more ancient than the systems since set up by man, and 
that there never has been a time since the institution of the churches in 
which there were not such tribunals as had, and exercised, the power of 
calling and ordaining their own ministry, making and unmaking them as 
occasion required, and as best pleased themselves under the laws of the 
gospel. It is a mixture of nonsense and error to say that the ministry reigns 
over the churches by a divine right alone, since it can be proved by no place 
in the Scriptures, These foolish inferences cannot be logically drawn from 
the Scriptures, since they impute to the ministry acts of which in their persons 
the Scriptures give no warrant and of which the apostles had no knowledge 
and never exercised. Can the [lower of all the churches be imputed to a 



446 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPEUDEKCE ; 

single man, who can be but in one place at one time, and is always compre- 
hended in the dimension of his own little sphere? 

If the apostles, before their death, divided the then Christian world into 
diocesan districts, and put a bishop in charge of each, giving to them specific 
powers, we were only to inquire into how many districts they appointed the 
world to be divided, and how well the division we see at this day agrees with 
the allotment made by them. But as the Scriptures make no mention of such 
a division and appointment, during the lives and labors of the apostles, and 
the churches having for many ages afterwards laid under such a vast 
confusion, and inasmuch as contemporary history gives us no clue as to what 
w^as done, we have nothing that can lead us to guess how it was to be sub- 
divided, nor to w^hom the several parts were to be given, and how they were 
to be governed. So that the difficulties are absolutely inextricable. And 
though it were true, that some one minister had a right to rule every parcel 
that is known to us, it could be of no use, for that right must necessarily 
perish which no man can prove, nor indeed claim. But as all natural rights 
by inheritance and succession must be by descent, this descent not being 
proved by the Scriptures there can be no natural right to this rule ; and all 
rights being either natural, created, or acquired, the right to be a minister, 
not being by inheritance or succession, must be created, or acquired, or none 
at all. There being no law or example laid down in the Scriptures by 
which these things can be done, as has been proved by reference to the apos- 
tolic churches, according to which ministers were made, we must seek the 
right concerning which we dispute, from the particular local churches, or we 
shall be able to find none. 

Having shown that the very first ministers were not bishops, in the sense 
that they had power to rule over many churches, and that the apostles them- 
selves exercised no such rule, and that all those ministers mentioned in 
Scripture came to be ministers different from, and inconsistent with, that of 
inheritance or succession ; and that we are not led by the word of God, nor 
by the reason of man, or light of nature to believe there is any such thing as 
a minister by divine right alone, above the call and ordination of his church, 
w^e may safely conclude there is no such thing, or that it never was so under- 
stood and practiced by the apostolic churches, which to Baptists is the same 
thing. It is as ridiculous to think of practicing a pow'er, which in the be- 
ginning was never exercised, as to create that w^hich never w^as ; for it is 
folly for a minister to pretend to derive a power from the Scripture, who 
cannot prove from the Scripture his right to exercise it. If this be not true 
we desire to know from which of the apostles, or early bishops of the apos- 
tolic times, the bishop of New York, for instance, deduces his authority to 
rule a whole city or State ; or what reason he can give why the right to 
rule, which is fancied to be in him, did not rather belong to the first of his 
predecessors, that attained to the rule he now enjoys, than to the humblest 
Baptist preacher ever ordained in a country log cabin or school-house ; or 
how that can ba transmitted to him which was not in the first? We know 
that no man, or church, can give what they have not ; that if there can be 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 447 

no giver there can be no gift ; if there be no root there can be no branch ; 
that the first part failing all the rest that should be derived from it must 
necessarily fail. 

It is ridiculous to say that one minister is above another when even the 
apostles never exercised any such prerogatives. It is ridiculous to say that 
Peter was pope when he never exercised any of the functions of a pope ; or 
that he was the first bishop of Rome when he never saw Rome ; or that it 
is lawful to have bishops ruling over many churches when no such rule was 
ever exercised in the apostolic times ; or that we should have ruling and 
presiding elders and cardinals and archbishops when there were not created 
such offices by those who founded the churches ; or that the churches in a 
whole State or territory should be cast up and lumped together, and the sov- 
ereign local churches thus divested of all ecclesiastical power, and these extra- 
ecclesiastical bodies invested with power and authority to rule over them, 
when nothing can be shown in the law of the gospel that authorizes it. How 
then can any of these things be lawful unless there be Scriptural authority 
for them — unless we are so disloyal to God's government as to say that man 
may with impunity destroy the local churches we see in operation in the 
apostolic times, and set up whatsoever they please instead thereof. It will 
not do to say that these things are established by divine right, and grounded 
upon the eternal and indispensable laws of Gods and nature. On the other 
hand, if God had intended them to be thus, he would have given us either 
positive laws or examples to that efifect. Hence those who established these 
human systems cannot contend that there is anything of divinity in them, 
unless they were from a root consistent with the Holy Scriptures. If they 
have no such a beginning, and are not grounded in the word of God, their 
establishment can have no right. If they have none they cannot be reputed 
to have any ; for no man can think that to be true which he knows to be false. 

If, therefore, there was no shadow of priestly government and right in 
the institution of the apostolic churches, there could be none in those that 
succeeded. Peter could have no more power than Paul, and Barnabas 
seemed to have as much as John or James ; and it is absurd to say that 
supremacy ought to be imputed to either of them, when none exercised it, 
and the powers and duties of each were the same ; for our thoughts are 
ever to be guided by truth in the study of these questions, or such an ap- 
pearance of it, as persuades or convinces us. If ecclesiastical governments 
proper arise from the consent of those who institute them, and are instituted 
by men according to their own inclinations, they did therein seek their own 
good. A people, therefore, that set up churches plain and simple, in imita- 
tion of the apostolic patterns, do it not that they may be great and glorious, 
but that they may fulfill the purposes of their organizations. They do not 
ordain ministers to lord it over the churches, but to become a loving shep- 
herd of a particular flock. This is not accomplished by setting one, a few, 
or more men above another in the administration of powers, but by placing 
ecclesiastical authority in those who may, under the laws of the gospel, 
rightly perform the office of governing the churches. He or they, therefore, 



448 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

may be singled out as Matthias, Paul and Barnabas were, who are most fit, 
in the opinion of the local church, to perform the duties belonging to the min- 
istry, in order to the public good of the churches for which they were 
ordained. If there be such a thing as the right of one minister to be above 
his fellows, and any rules laid down in the Scriptures whereby the one may be 
distinguished from the other, and the duties which the one may exercise to 
the exclusion of the other, then we would yield the point. But no right is 
to be acknowledged in any but such as is conferred upon them by those who 
have the right of conferring, and are concerned in the exercise of the power 
upon such conditions as best please themselves. No obedience can be due 
to him or them who have not a right of commanding. This cannot be con- 
ferred upon any that are not esteemed willing and able rightly to execute 
it and will not abuse it. This ability to perform the great work of a true 
minister of the gospel, and the integrity not to be diverted from it by any 
temptation to assume functions to which they are not entitled, comprehends 
all that is most commendable in an humble minister of Christ, and we may 
easily see that Avhensoever ministers act according to the laws of the gospel, 
they can have no other rule to direct them in ordaining one minister to the 
exclusion of another, than the opinion of a man's virtue and ability, best to 
perform the duty incumbent upon him as a Spirtual adviser of . the local 
church ; that is, by all means to procure the good of the people committed 
to his charge. The law of every instituted power, like that of an organic 
church, is to accomplish the end of its institution, as creatures are to do the 
will of their Creator, and in departing from it they overthrow their own 
being. Ministers of the gospel are distinguished from other men by the 
power with which the law of the gospel invests them for the good of Christ's 
cause. But he that cannot or will not procure that good, without puffing 
and swelling himself up above his brethren, destroys his own being, and be- 
comes like other men. This may seem strange to those who have their heads 
infected with priestcraft and other Episcopal whimsies ; but to Baptists, they 
are certainly grounded upon such truths as are evidenced by the Scriptures. 
Such men are viewed from the pinnacle of majestic reverence. If a 
bishop is a Scriptural functionary, he is a man whom the common people 
cannot elect or depose ; you cannot regard him with anything less than 
mystic awe and wonder ; and if you are bound to worship him, of course 
you cannot change or depose him. If you ask the immense majority of 
these aristocratic churchmen by what right a bishop rules over the churches, 
they never would tell you that he rules by the election of and ordination in 
a local church, as Matthias and Paul were elected and ordained, but they 
would tell you that he rules by God's grace ; and hence they believe that 
thc)^ have a mystic obligation to obey him. When he comes into his earthly 
kingdom, his patrimonial inheritance, it would be a sort of high treason to 
maintain that he did not reign by a Divine right, with its pretended divine 
sanction, for it would be equivalent to saying that he was an earthy mortal 
and was not in the line of apostolic succession, and was indeed no better 
than an ordinary Baptist preacher. Whatever he does has a sort of sane- 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 449 

tity different from what anyone else does. He has good intentions, and thinks 
his calling divine, and attends to the business of the churches as a government 
clerk, with his daily bread to get, attends to the business of his office. Ac- 
cordingly, his business is to resist the gospel order of things, and to set up 
and prolong what ought not to be. This unscriptural episcopacy, by its 
religious sanction, confirms all ecclesiastical order, and has little in it except 
itself. It has grown until it has given a vast strength to the entire polity 
by enlisting in its behalf the credulous obedience of the masses ; it lives 
aloof and absorbs all the holiness into itself, and turns over all the rest of 
the polity to the jurisdition of the dwarfed and misguided churches. 

Baptists affirm, therefore, that the liberty and equality of the Christian 
ministry is granted by Christ to every church, as an organic unit, and to 
every minister in his own proper person, in such a manner as may best serve 
his cause, and as it was exercised by all the apostles, and all the early 
ministers of the churches, as has been proved, and not by the vast body of 
the churches, which was never known under the supervision of the apostles. 
The histories of all the apostolic churches, especially those in which the 
apostles themselves figured most conspicuously, are so full of examples of 
independent local churches, their governments, and the equality of their 
ministers, that no man can question them unless he be very stupidly ignorant, 
or obstinately contentious. A Baptist minister, to be inferior to another 
could not be a member of a Baptist church, and no member who is not the 
equal of every other member, can belong to a Baptist church ; for he that is 
not in his own power as a freeman in Christ Jesus, can have any part in the 
government of others. Baptist churches are thus instituted. They all 
derive this power from the examples of the apostoKc churches. These first 
assemblies did not, and could not, confer ministerial superiority upon one 
man and deny it to another. They had no such power, and such as now 
claim superiority under them, can inherit none from those that had none ; 
and there can be no right in all these hierarchical church governments, and 
in all these ministerial dignitaries, that men so much venerate and worship. 
I am sure nothing can tend more to their overthrow than the study of 
Baptist church jurisprudence in all its beauty and simplicity. 

Religious liberty, being only an exemption from the dominion of others, 
the question ought not to be, how churches can come to be free, but how a 
minister comes to have a dominion over them? for until the right of dominion 
be proved, and justified from the law of the gospel, liberty subsists as arising 
from the nature and being of the churches. Liberty of the churches is from 
those who institute them, for no minister can have more power than he has 
received from the churches. Hence a minister having no power to govern 
in himself, and being nothing but what the church makes him, must owe all 
to the church, and nothing to any one from whom he has received nothing. 
Christ only who confers this freedom from priestly domination upon the 
churches, can deprive them of it. And we can in no way understand that 
he has done so, unless he had so declared by express revelation, or had set 
some distinguishing marks of dominion and subjection upon his churches. 
29 



450 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPEUDENCE ; 

It would be justifiable enougli bad some of the apostles pretended to a 
dominion over the cburcbes, for ministers of this day to exercise the same 
power, in imitation of their examples. But nothing of the kind appears of 
record, for Paul says : What have I to do to judge those without f The rule, 
therefore, of one minister over another, and over the churches, which Presby- 
terians and Episcopalians fancy to be lawful, universal, and perpetual, fails in 
the very beginning and is directly contrary to what they assert ; and being 
never known to have been authorized afterwards by the apostles, were 
enough to silence them forever, if they had anything of modesty or regard 
for the truth. That which was begun without warrant of law, has been 
carried on in ignorance, and has ended in confusion. 

It is my purpose to dedicate this treatise, when finished, to the Baptist 
ministry of the United States. I propose to do this because I am fully per- 
suaded that they are the most intelligent class of men to whom has been 
committed the preaching of the word of God ; not only so, but they are the 
most loyal to the truth as it is written in that word. Yea, more can be 
truthfully said of them, they have been, under the blessings of God, enabled 
to resist the blandishments of priestly power, and to remain humble and 
modest shepherds of one flock, not for rule and government over them, but 
to feed them with the bread of eternal life. Faithful and true men of God ! 
you have not received your reward in this life, but there is laid up for you a 
crown of glory in the life to come. Though weak as babes in the flesh, God 
has clothed you with the spiritual strength of giants and enabled you to 
perform a work wonderful to behold. You have not puffed up yourselves 
with official pride and gone off* after the vain glory of this world, as others 
have done, but have remained faithful to the trust Christ committed to 
your keeping. You have never considered yourselves wiser than Christ and 
his apostles by pretending to set up new churches and new systems of polity 
for their government, but have been content to take the Lord's models and 
have made the best of them, thus showing your loyalty to him and his govern- 
ment on earth, believing that Except the Lord build the house, they labor in 
vain that build it. Truly there is no surer sign of the decay and decline of a 
church or a ministry than their fondness for gaudy show and ostentatious 
pride. Thank the Lord Baptist churches and Baptist ministers have been 
marvelously exempt from these evidences of decay and weakness When 
he instituted this ministry he set bounds and limits to their powers and 
created a circumscribed jurisdiction within which they must act, beyond 
which if they go their performances are devoid of any divine efficacy. As 
the local independent church is the seat and subject of Christ's ordinances 
and worship on earth, so are his ministers the servants of the churches, in 
his name, to administer those ordinances, and to lead that worship, to the 
edification of all whom tlie Lord has called to attend upon their ministry. 
It is as absurd to say that Christ ordained two kinds or orders of the Chris- 
tian ministry as to say he taught different doctrines, the one contrary to 
the other. Indeed there is an orthodox ministry as well as an orthodox 
jdoctrine. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 451 



CHAPTER XVI. 

BAPTIST CHURCH DIVISIONS, OR A SEPARATION OF ONE PART OF A CHURCH 

FROM THE OTHER. 

THUS in one of the preceding chapters we have shown the necessity and 
utility of ecclesiastical councils. We have shown that it is impossible for 
them to pretend to a power over the churches, or over our consciences, and 
that nothing can oblige us in faith or practice but the word of God and the 
sovereign local church. As to associations and conventions they are so 
wholly human in their constitution that though by custom and usage they 
are to be convened and made use of, yet to make either them or councils 
standing and formal judicatories, and give to them a legislative power, or a 
dominion and empire in faith, is something not taught in the word of God ; 
and, therefore, they cannot be legal tribunals obliging any but them who 
consent, and they themselves are bound no longer than a better reason inter- 
venes, and they can as much alter their findings when the case alters as they 
can abrogate any other matter to which they have voluntarily consented, and 
that without calling another council to release them therefrom. 

In this place let us consider those disorders and diseases that either divide 
or destroy a church of Christ. To treat the subject conveniently we will 
divide these disorders into those that are schismatical and those that are 
heretical — schisms being such as only divide a church, while heresy totally 
destroys it. Surely the valuable time of the reader could not be more profit- 
ably taken up than to evolve a few of the rules by which to ascertain the true 
ecclesiastial status of the factions in a divided church. If those composing 
a church could always have the proper use of reason and as much religion 
as they ought to have, our churches might be secure, at least from perishing 
from unnatural diseases and disorders ; and when they come to be dissolved, 
not by external violence, but by internal disorders, the fault is not in those 
who adhere to the doctrine and polity of the churches, but in those who de- 
part therefrom. Any who contend that Baptist church government is so 
sovereign as that its authority cannot be attacked when it steps beyond the 
bounds of the laws of its organization, mistakes the true nature of that gov- 
ernment. Some contend that if a Baptist church is invested with supreme 
government in a full and absolute manner, no one has a right to resist it, 
although there be a departure from that justice and equity which is the very 
basis of its free government, and that nothing remains for the membership 
who dissent but to suffer and obey with patience. This idea is founded 
upon the supposition that such a church is not accountable to any one, not 
even the denomination, for the manner in which it governs, and that if an 



452 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDEXCE ; 

injured minority might control its actions and resist its authority where they 
conscientiously believe the church unjust, that authority would no longer be 
absolute and would in effect as they contend destroy all church government. 
They say that the church possesses all ecclesiastical power which no one can 
oppose; that if the church abuses its authority it does illy, indeed, and 
wounds its conscience, but that its doings are no less obligatory, as being 
founded on the lawful right to govern, and that the church by covenant and 
institution in giving the ruling majority the sovereignty, has given the minor- 
ity no right to revolt against that sovereignty. This process of reasoning is 
correct if we concede the fact that the majority is always right and do not 
materially err. In endeavoring to discover the true rule in this behalf we 
ought to weigh carefully every circumstance in order to make a just applica- 
tion of these principles. 

Baptist churches are subject to the laws of the gospel because they can 
make no new laws except what is found in the Scriptures, and have no 
power but what is given by the laws, since they cannot abrogate what God 
has instituted nor one church free itself from a law that was given them all. 
The power of the church is the power of the law — a power of right, not 
wrong. The church oaght to exercise the power of the law of the gospel as 
becomes the representative of Christ upon earth, because that power is the 
power of Christ alone ; but the power of doing wrong is the power of the 
evil one, and not of Christ. Whilst the church remains the ground and 
pillar of the truth, it is indeed the representative of Christ, but when it 
turns from the truth to teach for doctrine that which is heresy it forfeits its 
church state, and unless it repents its candlestick shall be removed, and can 
no longer lay claim to that which it has forfeited and lost by apostasy. In 
being a church by the law of Christ it is such as the law makes it, and by 
that law we can only judge what manner of church it is, whether true or 
false. In all things we are obliged by our church covenant to hearken to 
the church when she commands those things which Christ does not counter- 
mand. It were a thing much to be desired if there were no divisions, yet 
differences of opinion touching points of doctrine controverted is rather to 
be chosen than unanimous acquiescence in heresies and material erroi-s. Net 
every division, but such as are causeless separations from the communion of 
the church is schismatical. All such as only forsake the heresies of the 
church do not thereby forsake the church, and may justly cast off from them- 
selves the imputation of schism, for in such cases those who do not separate 
from such errors are to be considered as the common partakers thereof. It 
is one thing to separate from the communion of the whole denomination 
united in one communion, professing the same faith and worshipping God 
after the same manner — one thing to separate from those who are united 
among themselves, and another to separate from those who are divided 
among themselves. 

It w^as not the pleasure of Christ to give to any council or society of men 
authority to pronounce for all the churches a judicial sentence in controver- 
sies of religion in such a way as to do violence to the conscience, although it 



OE, THE COMMON" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 453 

was his most ardent prayer just before his death that his people might be 
one. On the other hand the whole teaching of our Saviour was that all 
men should content themselves with, and to persuade others unto, an unity 
of charity and toleration in matters of belief, and it is certain he has author- 
ized no man to force all men to unity of opinion regardless of the truth. 
For we are commanded, to hold forth the word of life; to buy the truth and 
sell it not ; to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints ; to hold 
fast the form of sound words which they have received ; to strive together for 
the faith of the gospel; and to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of 
peace and love. In order sometimes to preserve these principles it becomes 
necessary to differ with one's brethren in the same church which often di- 
vides the church into factious. Now factions in a church which may justify 
themselves are those which cling to principles rather than to their conse- 
quences — to truth rather than to men and majorities. Those that are un- 
justifiable are such as ostensibly display the selfishness of their character in 
their actions. The means which they employ are as wretched as the end 
at which they aim. They would wreck a church in order to carry out a 
purpose, being deficient in good faith. Those who generate and lead factions 
generally begin by discerning their own interest and their own selfish pur- 
poses, and discover those other interests which may be collected around and 
combined with it. They then generally find out some new doctrine or 
principle which may suit the purposes of their new association, and which 
they adopt in order to disrupt the church of which they are members, and 
tiius become schismatics in the true sense of that word. When a church 
falls into this condition it is not the rule of the majority, but the rule of 
those who are the strenuous partisans of the few who have incited and now 
lead the majority. 

Men enter a Baptist church to embrace the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, 
and that they may enjoy all the privileges and immunities of this divine 
institution. The moment the church neglects to bestow these blessings, or 
falls into such disorders as to be unable to do so, it has broken its faith and 
its prerogatives are forfeited. It matters not in what form such a departure 
from the faith appears, it has disregarded the purpose for which it was con- 
stituted, that is, the keeping of the faith once dehvered to the saints, and 
no reason, either technical or moral, can convince the denomination that it 
has not degraded itself, and unless it repents, it is not justly and totally 
destroyed by all the laws either human or divine. Although in theory the 
church may have absolute power, yet individuals composing the church never 
yield up the entire sovereignty. There is one portion always reserved by 
the members — the right and power of preserving themselves as Baptists, and 
keeping pure the doctrines of the gospel. This is one of the inalienable 
rights of every church member and is the property of every one. Were we 
even to wish it, we could not alienate that liberty of thought and action 
and soul, which is the birthright of every Baptist, breathed into him at the 
moment of his regeneration. Hence, Baptist church government stands in 
greater need than any other of sincere piety and universal intelligence, be- 



454 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; 

cause it is naturally weak and exposed to factional quarrels, the violence of 
which often rends them in twain. The Saviour committed his churches to 
the faithful, pious and spiritually minded, and not to the fancy or covetous- 
ness of the heretical, the quarrelsome or contentious. 

The unity of the faith is effected by love one for another ; uniting all the 
members of the church in one body ; contrary to this is schism or division, 
which is a voluntary and causeless separation from the unity of charity 
whereby all the members of the church are united, and consists in being di- 
vided from that true church with which a man agrees in all points of 
faith. Schism is a special aud particular vice distinct from heresy, because 
they are opposite to two distinct virtues — schism to unity, heresy to faith. 
Heretics corrupt the faith by believing of Christ false things, while schis- 
matics, by wicked and needless divisions, break from fraternal union, 
although they believe the same doctrine we believe. He who has denied 
the true faith has broken the unity of the church. Those who really and 
dearly love the church of Christ are rarely ever guilty of schisms, for 
schism in the beginning may be understood different from heresy, yet, in 
process of time, if schismatics stand aloof from the church, they are very 
apt to fall into some heresy, and by that means become both schismatics 
and heretics. Hence schism, or the breaking without cause the unity 
of the church is never justified, except when it proceeds originally from 
and is caused by some heresy indulged in by the dominant majority in 
a church, or some gross injustice practiced, which renders living in the same 
church insupportable. For light and frivolous causes a schism is a most 
grievous sin, as nothing so tends to degrade the cause of Christ as that the 
church should be divided. True religion is not sought or looked for either 
among heretics or schismatics, but among those alone who are purely ortho- 
dox and lovers of the peace and unity of the whole church, and are followers 
of the truth. 

There are those who for trifling or small causes divide the body of Christ 
— such as speak of peace and make war, such as strain at gnats and swallow 
camels. It should be laid down as a general rule that slight corruptions of 
manners yield no sufficient cause to leave the church, otherwise men must 
go not only out of the church, but, as the apostle says, out of the world. 
Even the Saviour foretold that there would be in the church tares growing 
with choice corn and sinners with just men. We should learn to tolerate 
many things for the good of the peace and unity of the church, things which 
we detest for the sake of peace ; for there are many slight disorders in every 
church that are not hurtful to any but such as imitate them. To break the 
unity of the church for every little disorder we see in a church is but to flit 
from one church to another without any hope of amending them. The ex- 
perience of the past has shown that those who are the most vehement accu- 
sers of others are often the greatest offenders against the peace of the 
churches, and that they are, indeed, the greatest schismatics who make the 
way to heaven narrower, the yoke of Christ heavier, the differences of faith 
greater, the conditions of ecclesiastical communion harder and stricter than 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 455 

they were made at the beginning by Christ and his apostles. It might be 
asked : How can a man remain faitliful and pure being joined with those 
that are corrupted ? The answer is emphatic ; that he cannot so remain, 
especially if he be joined with them ; that is, if he commit any evil with 
them, or countenance them which do commit it ; but if he do neither of these 
things, he is not joined with them. These two things being retained will 
keep such men pure and uncorrupted, that is, neither doing evil nor ap- 
proving it in others. Every church tolerates many things ; and yet what is 
against faith or practice a good man will neither approve nor countenance. 
But the imposing upon men, under pain of excommunication, the necessity of 
professing known errors, and practicing known corruptions is a sufficient and 
necessary cause of the division of a church. 

It cannot be contended that a church has sufficiently discharged her duty 
to God and man, by avoiding only fundamental errors and heresies, if in the 
meantime she be negligent of other weighty duties, which, though they do 
not destroy salvation, but block up the way to it. Such errors as these, if 
any church should tolerate and neglect to reform them, and not permit them 
to be freely, yet peaceably, opposed and impugned, no pious man can say 
that she has sufficiently discharged her duty, and has with due fidelity dis- 
pensed the gospel of Christ. AVhat ought a faithful minority in a church, 
who oppose these disorders, say and do if they be taught by the church and 
commanded to be taught, and the church thunder out her admonitions 
against those who do not beheve and practice them ? Can any one but fear, 
that such a church, though it hold no error absolutely inconsistent with 
salvation or true church polity, that its candlestick is not either already 
removed or the light of it will be very soon totally extinguished ? But not- 
withstanding this, the communion of a church is not to be forsaken con- 
temptuously for every error not fundamental unless it exact either a 
dissimulation of them, being sinful, or a profession of them, against the 
dictates of conscience. If the church does this then a division is justifiable 
and her communion is to be forsaken rather than the sin of hypocrisy be 
committed. But in this behalf it may be laid down as a general rule, that 
for slight disorders ought a church to be forsaken if she does not so enjoin 
them upon others; but if she should do so, then we should forsake men 
rather than God, and leave the church's communion rather than commit sin, 
or be compelled to profess and practice errors as divine truths. Unity is not 
to be purchased at so dear a price, but we should choose rather to leave the 
church voluntarily or to be ejected from its communion than to persist in 
the profession of errors though not destructive to salvation, yet hindering 
edification. For men should not dissemble, but if they be convinced in con- 
science that their own church do thus err, they are of necessity to forsake 
the church in the profession and practice of those errors. 

We speak of divisions in churches that arise upon just accusations and 
for adequate causes and not those schismatic and factional in their nature. 
It is the manifest duty of the minority in a church to yield obedience to the 
church in all cases of difierences when the church has shown a disposition to 



456 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

admiuister justice and to exercise its proper authority without oppression. 
It is not the design here to set up the rights of schismatics. In church 
government when a number of men, a part of a church, without authority 
and without cause, consult apart from the church, to contrive the guidance of 
the rest ; this is a schism, or a fraudulent and secret seducing of the church 
for their own particular ends. Those who, without just cause, set up an 
interest in themselves, as against the interests of the ruling majority in the 
church, become an enemy to the same. In following their own selfish 
designs, they offend all except a few disaffected creatures by whose help they 
corrupt the church and thereby incur universal censure. Not having in 
themselves enough power and influence to legitimately carry their points, 
they stir up one faction against another and place the only hope of their 
success in the calamity of a church division. For a body of schismatics, 
large or small, to thus conspire against the sovereiguty of the church and thus 
sow the seeds of discord, is a stab at the vitals of the church, and an entire 
subversion of the order of church polity, and a manifest diminution of church 
dignity and authority. 

It is patent to all close observers of Baptist church government that the 
disorders arising therein are more schismatic than heretical. Our divines 
tell us that all that is sufficient for any man's salvation is for him to repent 
of his sins and to believe that Christ is the son of the living God ; and suppli- 
mental to this fundamental belief is for him to believe that the Scripture is 
true and its authors divinely inspired, and contains all thiugs necessary for 
the salvation of the soul ; and to the best of his ability and endeavor to find 
and believe the true sense of it, without believing any particular catalogue or 
thirty-nine articles conceived by the T\^it of man to be the fundamentals of 
faith ; and, therefore, in believing all that is contained in the Scripture we 
are sure to believe all that is necessary to one's salvation. And if we err in 
our interpretations of some obscure and ambiguous texts of Scripture we may 
be sure that God w^ill not condemn us ; because if w^e honestly desire to find 
the truth it does not stand to reason that God will damn him who desires and 
endeavors to find the truth. This is fortunate for every church so long as 
the Scriptures by Divine Providence are preserved in their integrity and 
authority, and are reverenced although ever so far collapsed and overrun 
with disorders, it is yet possible of being reduced to its original state by the 
untiring labors of those who are faithful and obedient. While corruptions 
of manners yields no sufficient cause to leave the church, yet it is a sufficient 
cause to cast them out of the church w^ho are disobedient, for their obstinate 
contempt of the church's public admonitions ; yet in doing this it is often 
milder and more merciful to retain in the church those who deserve to be 
excommunicated, if their sins be not too egregious, than to eject those who 
deserve to be retained. For God intending that members of a church should 
live together justly, certainly wills that he who does no wrong should suffer 
none. The work of a church is to be just and see that the minority in a 
divided church is given every privilege to which they are entitled, especially 
in a system of church government where there is no right of iippeal. But 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 457 

sad to say tliat the church which is to protect the whole membership is often 
known not to have done it. The church sometimes renders its office useless 
by neglecting to do justice ; sometimes it becomes mischievous by overthrow- 
ing it. The laws of God and those of the church are of no effect when the 
church itself is left at liberty to break them, and if the determination of the 
church to act unjustly cannot be otherwise restrained than by a division, 
such a division is justified by the laws of God and the customs of the church. 
If law properly so called is a rule the violation of which should be visited 
with punishment, what ought to be done with a majority of a church who 
with impunity tramples upon the law which they themselves have established? 
If a church, thus divided, refuse to call an impartial council to adjudi- 
cate such troubles, that circumstance alone shows a disposition to refuse to 
do justice. No fair-minded church will undertake to discipline a large and 
influential minority of its membership who have been estranged, without the 
advice and counsel of those standing aloof and outside of the church. Eccle- 
siastical proceedings are of force against those who submit to church author- 
ity, or may be brought to trial, but efforts at discipline are of no effect against 
large numbers who resist and ask for a council, and are of such power that 
they cannot be restrained. It were absurd to cite a large body of members 
who conscientiously believe they have justice on their side, to appear before 
a church, who often through passion have forfeited the character of a just 
judge. If a single member of a church does anji^hing against the discipline 
of the church and the rule of the gospel, so that he gives offence to the whole 
church, the whole church or a large majority consenting together may safely 
cut him off" and cast him away. But when it is not an express and clear 
duty it is always a great source of danger, and a cause of schisms and divi- 
sions in the church to undertake to discipline great numbers, for the keys of 
the church were given for the shutting out of single persons upon their single 
responsibility and not multitudes. It is certain that to excommunicate a 
single person cannot make a schism, unless the multitude follow him ; and 
consequently a multitude is a dangerous thing to be involved in censures. If 
great parts of a church be excommunicated it is certain to make a schism if 
they unwillingly suffer the censure, a schism not only in the particular 
church wherein the disturbance arises, but it sometimes disturbs the whole 
denomination. When public divisions and a breach of the denominational 
peace are in agitation, the welfare of the whole denomination is sometimes as 
much concerned as the particular church ; and, therefore, where there are 
no fundamental errors involved, and where the laws of God do not intervene 
the greatest care and precaution should prevail, and such factions should not 
be cut off" from the church except upon the solemn advice of a prudent coun- 
cil after a full and fair consideration of the case. For in a church trial 
where the factions are evenly divided every man's cause is right in his own 
eyes, and when such heats as these happen between confident persons every 
man is judge of his own cause ; and what is like to be the result of such 
things all the world can easily imagine. One of the chief ends of Chris- 
tians entering churches is to try to live according to God's ordinances and 



458 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JURISPRUDENCE ; 

to mete out even-handed justice to one another in all differences that may 
arise. In the unfortunate and unhappy condition of a divided church there 
is wanting an established, certain, settled and known law, received and 
allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the 
common measure to decide all controversies between them ; for every church 
under ordinary circumstances is able to do this, yet men being biased by 
their interests are not apt to allow of it as a law binding upon them in the 
application of it to their particular cases. Hence there is wanting an indif- 
ferent judge, to determine all such differences according to any established 
rule ; for every one in that state being both judge and executioner of the 
law, men being partial to themselves and prejudiced against others, passion 
and revenge are apt to carry them too far in their own cases, as well as 
negligence to make them too remiss in other men's cases. Besides there is 
often wanting a power to back and support the sentence, when right, and 
give it due execution. Whereas, if an impartial council is agreed upon, these 
difficulties can be obviated. 

If Baptists are so careful to see that their ministers are properly called 
and ordained that they may be fit administrators of the ordinances of the 
church, why should they not be equally solicitous about the proper order 
and organization of the churches ? If a minister were to attempt to consti- 
tute himself a minister and undertake to do the work of a full gospel minis- 
ter without a call and ordination thereto, what commotion would he cause 
among the churches, and how soon would he be silenced ! The proper and 
orderly organization of the churches is of vastly more importance in the ad- 
ministration of church affairs than the ordination of the ministry, for after 
all it is the church that administers the ordinances while the minister is but 
the agent through which it is done. If members, be they few or many, can 
with impunity withdraw from a regularly organized church and can resolve 
themselves into a church, what does organization mean, and of what value 
is it in church polity ? Yet very often do we see such disorders in our sys- 
tem and recalcitrant bodies of men, minorities in the church, recognized as 
churches by the denomination at large. We often hear brethren speak very 
extravagantly about the right of minorities. Minorities have no rights aside 
from those belonging to every other member of the church except in the 
limitations imposed upon the majorities. They have precisely the same 
rights as the majority, except the power to rule the church. They have a 
right to all the privileges of church members, to think, speak, write, publish, 
persuade, convince and to vote, and thus become themselves the majority, 
and thus to become in turn the ruling power in the church. To give them 
greater rights than these would be to reverse the order of church govern- 
ment and make them the dominators over the majority, and the obstructors 
of the ecclesiastical will. In all cases where fragments of a church fly off* at 
a tangent and attempt to set up a church without organization, they should 
receive no recognition especially where the church from which they go has not 
destroyed itself by the practice of heresy. 

If the ties of the church are broken by unhappy divisions, usually the 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 459 

fragments will immediately unite again ; and if a part of the membership 
are thrown out of the pale of a large church, they themselves usually again 
unite to obey some general rule, to have it insisted upon by some authority, 
to begin the church anew. But certainly they ought not to attempt to set 
up a church in and of themselves without calling a regular council to con- 
stitute them into a regular church. No council would hardly refuse to 
organize them into, and recognize them as a church, provided they were not 
tainted with heresy, and it would remain for the denomination, in the future, 
to extend to them recognition as a regular Baptist church. If such a body of 
Baptists were so grossly in the wrong as that no judicious council or presb}i;ery, 
from sister churches, could be convened to organize them into a church, it is 
very probable that were they to set up housekeeping without the assistance 
and recognition of such a council, the denomination would refuse to take 
them into the sisterhood of Baptist churches. Each church is an organic 
unit and cannot be divided into fragments and both fragments claim to be 
a church. It is no accidental mass of atoms, it is an organism. It takes 
methodical organization to constitute a church. It is no ready-made ma- 
chine to be set in motion by recalcitrant members who lived previously out 
of it, no disease of ecclesiastical government which will be cured in time by 
denominational recognition ; no accidental thing, no institution above and 
separate from the denomination, no instrument for one or a few, void and 
without form ; — a church is Christ's judicatory upon earth, — it is the glory 
of the Son of God. 

One essential difference between a spiritually enlightened and pious church 
and one destitute of these noble quahties is, that the former may contend 
among themselves, but they settle their differences and animosities by con- 
cihatory and moral methods, while the latter decide theirs by church schisms 
and divisions. A division in a Baptist church is the offensive action of one 
part of the church against the other, being the attempt to overcome the 
aggression of the majority in its management of church affairs. It is the 
last remedy to be resorted to and should be availed of not merely when all 
others have been tried, but when aU others have failed. This is a remedy, 
which, although it may remove the particular evil complained of, it does so 
only by sometimes substituting a worse. And, furthermore, it is one of those 
sad transactions from which both parties are sure to be sufferers. Discord 
in a church is a state not only inimical to religious development, but it is a 
condition most opposite to it. It is true that these upheavals seldom occur 
in the best churches, while in some other churches mal-administered they are 
quite frequent. " In all Baptist churches these quarrels are apt to occur 
between those spiritually minded as well as among those not so well 
developed ; but it is not often among the former that resort is had to a 
church division, which is analogous to war between nations. A condition of 
complete religious development will, it is hoped, be one also of permanent 
and solid peace among the churches. Occasional divisions, like occasional 
quarrels, are nevertheless evils almost inevitable. That form of church 
government in which all are required to take part necessitates some 



460 A TREATISE UPOK BAPTIST CHUECH JUHISPEUDENCE ; 

differences of opinion. But it should induce also mutual forbearance and 
amity as conducive to the interest of each. As we prefer our own homes to 
all other places and so conduct ourselves that peace will dwell therein, so we 
should prefer our own church to all others and make it a fit dwelling-place 
for the Holy Spirit. 

The outbreak of troubles between contending factions in a divided church, 
is, therefore, analogous to the occurrence of quarrels among men. In the 
case of both, the disagreement tends to develop the energies of the contending 
parties whether for good or evil purposes ; but it puts a stop to all social and 
spiritual intercourse between them, and the progress of development is at the 
same time impeded. In the place of endeavoring to benefit, their only 
object is now to overcome and overreach one another. If there be those in 
the church whose voice is for peace they imitate the conduct of angels ; if 
there be those who fan the flames of discord they follow the course of the 
evil one. As in the case between different rival parties in a state, so different 
factions in a divided church have no legitimate right to attempt the injury 
of one another, further than what is necessary to promote the truth and the 
general benefit of the church and the whole denomination, in preventing or 
repelling aggression, through the unjust ambition of a faction bent on the 
injury of the church, and by restraining the undue assumption of authority 
that does not belong to them. The only admissible excuse for engaging in 
these quarrels is the restoration and preservation of Baptist j)rinciples, which 
of itself affords the surest guarantee for the permanence of peace and security. 
If the love of the truth, equity, and justice were generally established in 
every church, and this spirit animated all their members alike, not only 
would each of our churches be as forward to assist and improve, as some of 
them seem to be to injure one another ; but in the maintenance of their 
mutual friendly relations, the welfare of each and the whole body of them 
would be considered, and but few occasions for ruptures between them 
would be afforded, and instead of internal discords, peace and tranquility 
would be their happy portion. 

By a faction, I understand a number of members, whether amountiag to 
a majority or a minority of the whole church, who are united or actuated 
by some common impulse of passion or interest adverse to the rights of other 
members, or to the permanent and aggregate interest of the church. There 
are two methods of curing the causes of factions : one by removing the causes of 
the same ; the other, by controlling its effects. There are again two methods 
of removing the causes of a faction : the one by destroying the liberty which 
is essential to its existence ; the other, by giving to every member, if pos- 
sible, the same opinions, the same passions and the same interests. To de- 
stroy the liberty which is essential to the existence of factions, would be to 
destroy Baptist church government altogether, and would be worse than 
to destroy the faction. Ecclesiastical liberty is to faction what air is to fire 
— a food without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly 
to abolish liberty of action and opinion, which is essential to ecclesiastical 
liberty, because it nourishes faction, then it would be to wish the annihila- 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 461 

tion of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its 
destructive agency. If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is 
supplied by tho Baptist principle, which enables the majority to defeat its 
sinister views by a regular vote. It may clog the administration of church 
affairs, it may convulse the church ; but it will be unable to execute and 
mask its violence under the forms of church government. But when a ma- 
jority is included in a faction, the form of Baptist church government, on 
the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to the ruling passion or interest, both 
of the church and the faction. To secure the good of the church, and at the 
same time to preserve the spirit of popular church government, is the first 
great object to which our energies are directed. The leaders of factions 
in our churches should think weU what they do. The mind and passion of 
such men gather velocity and momentum as they move in a given direction, 
so that the actors in these connections often find themselves carried or im- 
pelled beyond the point they aim to reach, or if they would stop, find them- 
selves powerless to arrest the swift rush of those whom they have put in 
motion, and thus in the end the church is rent in twain and the cause made 
to suffer. If rival factions in a church, instead of waging war one with 
another, could consent to settle their differences by calling in the good 
offices of a judicious council, a far more equitable basis for a firm and per- 
manent peace would be established through their deliberations, where truth, 
moderation, forbearance and equity prevail, than the chances of discord 
and schism where passion and physical numbers decide who is to obtain his 
claim. 

It is in vain that we seek a church that is in all respects free from the 
possibility of divisions. Well-regulated and pious churches sometimes fall 
into these errors. Those that arise from misunderstandings and mistakes 
are easily healed if they be discovered in time and caution is used in their 
handling, but such as proceed from mahce, the extinction of them is exceed- 
ingly difficult, if they have continued long- enough to corrupt the church. 
However liable the churches are to these divisions, they rarely ever arise 
from malice towards the church itself, for they are hurtful to the church, 
and every true lover of Christ loves his church as he loves himself, and none 
are designedly willing to hurt themselves. There may be, and often is, 
malice in those who lead oflT in these divisions towards individuals in the 
church, and whatever is done in these unhappy broils, is done to overcome 
and overreach some particular man or faction in the church, rather than to 
injure the church itself If it be said that the breaking of the unity of the 
church for a just cause implies that which is evil, the answer is, that it ought 
not to be so considered as to those who seek nothing but that which is just. 
And though the ways of delivering an oppressed membership from the vio- 
lence of an unjust and unreasonable church be extraordinary, if their cause 
be just, the righteousness of the act fully justifies the authors. They who 
have the virtue and courage to resist injustice and save themselves, can never 
want the right of doing it. Their actions always carry in themselves their 
own justification. In a church that is guilty of a mal-administration of its 



462 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE J 

own affairs, and tramples upon the laws of its own creation, lie who denies 
an injured minority the right to quit the church to escape oppression, does at 
once condemn the most glorious actions of the wisest, best and holiest men 
that ever lived, together with the laws of God and man, upon which they 
are founded. In a system of church government, where there is no appeal, 
this is the only remedy left. 

If therefore laws are necessary for the government of the minority, they 
are no less so for the majority, or rather that is not a church which has no 
laws binding upon both alike. It is no less impossible for a church to 
subsist without such laws and an observance of them, than for the body of a 
man to perform its functions without nerves and bones, and be in a perfect 
state of health. That rule must be uncertain which depends upon the fancy 
of a church as to whether it will be executed or not. The rights of the mem- 
bership of a church ought to be established upon a firmer basis which no pas- 
sion can disturb. It ought to be void of oppression and partiality, and 
retain in some measure the divine perfection. The laws of the gospel of 
Christ do not enjoin that which pleases a part of the church, but without 
any regard to persons, commands that which is just and good, and disci- 
plines all alike, whether rich or poor, high or low. The church that governs 
not according to the laws of the gospel, degenerates into a profane society, 
and its acts of discipline have no efficacy whatever. If the security of the 
whole membership be the supreme law of the church, and this security 
extends to, and consists in the preservation of their rights as Baptists, that 
law must necessarily be the root and beginning, as well as the end and 
limit of all ecclesiastical power, and all church discipline must be subservient 
and subordinate thereto. The question will not then be, what pleases the 
ruling majority, but what best preserves the rights and privileges of the mi- 
nority as well as the majority. The majority of a divided and agitated 
church does not rule for itself, but for the whole church ; it is not the mas- 
ter, but the servant of the church. 

It is very difficult to lay down rules by which to determine the causes 
which justify a member or a minority of members in withdrawing from a 
church where it has openly violated a common right, or a principle of jus- 
tice. But when the injuries are manifest, and an attempt is made to deprive 
a member or members of those rights to which they are entitled under their 
covenant, when there is an infraction of any of those fundamental laws of the 
church, or a departure from orthodoxy, or an effi)rt made to subvert any 
other principle of Bible doctrine or polity, to which alone it appears the 
members were willing to submit on entering the church, a division is inevi- 
table and ought to follow. Those members, although in the minority, who 
are more jealous of their rights, so sacred to them, and who know how to 
appreciate them, though obliged to allow the majority to do as they please, 
are under no obligation to submit to the new order of things. They may 
with impunity quit a church which has dissolved itself by disorders and 
corruptions. They have a right to retire to a church of their own faith and 
order, provided they can find one willing to receive them, or they may 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 463 

organize a church of their own, if upon application to sister churches a 
council or presbytery can be convened willing to recognize them as a church 
of Christ. And any church receiving such members, or any council organi- 
zing them as a church even without letters of commendation, commits no 
breach of Baptist church customary law, provided that thereby no dissen- 
sions are sown in the denomination. Allegiance to one's church signifies no 
more than such obedience as the customary laws of the church and the Bible 
require. No covenant can bind any except those who make it, and that 
only in the sense and meaning of it. No Baptist can by his covenant be 
obHged by anything beyond, or contrary to the meaning of it. Private men 
in secular governments who swear obedience ad legem, according to law, 
swear not obedience extra, or contra legem. Certainly violent and extreme 
measures ought not to be resorted to in cases like these. Loving words and 
kind advice rarely ever fail to bring an erring brother to a knowledge of 
the truth. He may be fully convinced that the majority of his brethren may 
err, and that he has the right and often it is his duty to use his whole energy 
to convince them of their error, and lawfully to bring about a different state 
of things. But if he is a Baptist at heart and has the mind and the inclina- 
tion to learn and to embrace the true doctrine, a degree of unrest seems to 
be attached to a person that does not swim with the broad stream. No mat- 
ter what flagrant contradictions may take place, or however sudden the 
changes may be, there seems to exist in the breast of every true Baptist a 
deep feeling of discomfort, until he has rejoined the general current. To 
wilfully dissent is deemed to be a malcontent ; it seems more than rebellious, 
it seems traitorous. They become ashamed, and if they are not truly black 
sheep they soon mingle with the rest of the flock. 

While a member or a minority of members may leave a church and sepa- 
rate from its communion for good and sufficient reasons, yet if they in a fac- 
tious spirit break the unity of the church having no good reasons for so 
doing, they thereby become schismatics and have no right to be recognized 
by sister churches, and ought not to be assisted or countenanced in the 
organization of a Baptist church. It ought to be borne in mind that a 
minority in a church great or small should not be permitted to resist church 
authority and pronounce sentence on its conduct in all rightful disciplinary 
matters without exposing the church to dangerous troubles and violent 
shocks capable of overthrowing it. The disaffected party should remember 
that the ruling majority can neither govern the church nor properly fulfill 
its destiny, if it be not punctually obeyed. Minorities have no right in 
doubtful cases where no injustice is attempted and where no fundamental 
principles are involved, to question the wisdom of the church's decisions, for 
the church alone is responsible for the consequences that may result from 
them. The nature of church sovereignty will not permit members to resist 
its rightful authority whenever it appears to them to be unjust. This would 
be falling back into a state of disorganization, and rendering church polity 
of no effect. A member ought to patiently suffer from the church, things 
that are sufferable ; because whoever has submitted to the decision of a judge 



464 A TREATISE UPO^^ BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPRUDENCE ; 

in matters lawful to be judged, is no longer capable of deciding his own pre- 
tensions, and one's own private interests ought to be sacrificed for the peace 
and safety of the church. Those who leave the church under such circum- 
stances go out without any right to membership elsewhere, and the sister 
church that receives them without letters of commendation or without the 
advice of a council thereby gives countenance to those errors, which the 
parties seeking admission committed upon disrupting the church from 
which they go. 

In all such cases sister churches ought to observe a strict neutrality and 
on no account ought they to take sides with one faction or another in a 
divided church over a question of mere discipline. In other words the dis- 
censions in one church ought never to be allowed to spread from one church 
to another, and thus break the peace of the denomination. A sister church 
that wishes to preserve her own peace when the flames of discord are kin- 
dling in a neighboring church, cannot more successfully attain that object 
than by attending strictly to its own affairs and refusing to have anything 
to do with the quarrels that unhappily aricc in sister churches. As long as 
one church wishes securely to enjoy the blessings of peace herself, she must 
in all things show a strict impartiality towards the contending factions in a 
divided church ; for should she favor one of the parties to the prejudice of 
the other, she cannot complain of being treated as an adherent and'confeder- 
ate of the one as against the other, and thus discord is spread among the 
churches. While injustice is not to be countenanced, and on the contrary it 
is generous and praiseworthy to succor the oppressed and innocent, yet no 
church can afford to resolve in favor of one faction against the other, especi- 
ally where it is likely to divide the church attempting it. Every church 
ought on occasion to labor for the peace of the churches, and for securing 
them from discords as far as it can do this without exposing itself to the 
same discords. A church is more or less perfect as it is more or less adapted 
and inclined to preserve itself from dissensions and divisions and to help 
other churches less fortunate than themselves. Every church, therefore, 
should according to its power and influence contribute not only to put an- 
other church in possession of these advantages, but likewise to render it 
capable of procuring them itself. But though a church be obHged to pro- 
mote, as far as lies in its power, the peace and concord of others, it is not 
entitled in an obnoxious way and uninvited to obtrude these good offices 
upon them. Every church in a state of discord has a perfect right and it is 
emphatically its duty to ask of another that assistance and those kind offices 
which she conceives herself to stand in need of In all such cases where 
divisions are threatened, both parties in the church, before it is too late, ought 
to call an impartial council to take these unhappy broils in hand, and if 
possible save the church from schisms and divisions. 

In all church quarrels, when the end is lawful, he who has a right to 
pursue that end has, of course, a right to employ all the lawful means which 
are necessary for its attainment. But the lawfulness of the end does not give 
a real right to anything further than barely the means necessary for the 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 465 

attainment of that end. Whatever is done beyond that is reprobated by 
the customary laws of the churches, is faulty and condemnable at the 
tribunal of conscience. What is just and perfectly innocent in the turmoil 
of a church trouble, in one particular situation, is not always so on other 
occasions. The rights and duties of church members go hand in hand 
mth necessity and the exigency of each case, but never exceeds them. But 
it is very difficult always to form a precise judgment of what every case 
requires, and as it belongs to each independent church to judge of what her 
own particular situation authorizes her to do, it becomes absolutely necessary 
that churches should reciprocally conform to general rules on this subject. 
Accordingly, whenever it is certain and evident that a particular measure is 
necessary to be taken in a divided church to preserve it as a pure church of 
Christ, or to thus preserve a minority therein as true and consistent Baptists, 
that measure thus viewed in a general light, is by the customary laws of the 
churches to be deemed lawful and consistent with propriety ; although they 
who unnecessarily adopt it when they might attain their end by gentler 
methods, are not innocent before God and their conscience. An innocent 
minority in a church no less than the church itself is obliged to preserve 
itself, as the church is no less obliged to preserve all its membei-s. The 
church owes this to itself since the loss of one of its members weakens it and 
is injurious to its entire preservation. It owes this to its members in 
particular, in consequence of the very act of organization, for those who 
compose a church are united for their common advantage and edification, and 
none can be justly deprived of this union or deprive themselves of the 
advantages they expect to derive from it, while all, both the church and the 
disaffected minority, are striving to fulfill the condition of that union. Since 
then all are obliged to preserve themselves from either heresies or other 
scandalous corruptions, all have a right to everything necessary to their 
preservation. For the common law of the churches as well as the law of 
nature gives us a right to everything, without which we cannot fulfill our 
obligation to God and ourselves; otherwise it would compel us to do 
impossibilities, or rather would contradict themselves in prescribing us a 
duty, and at the same time debar us of the only means of fulfilling it. It 
ought to be here understood, that these extraordinary means sometimes 
resorted to in a disturbed church ought not to be unjust in themselves, or 
such as are absolutely forbidden by the customary laws of the churches, and 
will not pass under the scrutinizing eye of the denomination. 

Every close observer of Baptist church government must have noticed how 
disorderly churches sometimes become when they attempt to put into execu- 
tion its ordinary disciplinary powers when large numbers are involved in 
disputes that arise in a divided church. If the charges be for heresies and 
the larger part of the church be partakers of these errors and, therefore, 
refuse to put in operation the disciplinary powers of the church to suppress 
them, it is very clear that the minority are not bound to remain in communion 
with them. The justification of the separation is put upon its necessity, and 
that necessity does not exist until all peacable and lawful means has been 
30 



466 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

resorted to in vain. It is a right that should not be exercised, and, indeed, 
cannot be said to exist, until the omissions and the oppressive acts of the 
church are ills as great as the ills of a division ; or to state it more accurately 
the disaffected should not forcibly disrupt a church until they can do better 
without the church than mth it, and not only so, but can go hence with the 
approval of the denomination, which keeps an ever-watchful eye upon all 
such disturbances, which as a grand court is ever in session rendering its 
verdict in the pages of history, and which of necessity and of light is the 
final trier of that question. It is infinitely better that these irregularities 
should be restrcdned by a division of the church, the pure separating from 
the corrupted than the whole church should become poisoned and perverted. 
Had not this spirit of resistance to church authority been prevalent in the 
early history of the church, none would have been left to contend for tlie 
faith and polity established by the apostles. So we see that the rights and 
privileges of a Baptist must be utterly subverted if the right did not rest 
somewhere to assert them especially in a system of government where there 
is no tribunal outside the church to supervise these matters ; and they who 
thus withdraw from a corrupted church cannot be accountable to any but to 
God and their own consciences for what they do in these emergencies. They 
only make use of their rights in aU these measures, which they adopt in good 
reason and in the fear of God ; and if evil or discord from thence results to 
the corrupted church that has reduced them to the necessity of taking such 
steps, they must impute the consequences only to the church that has thus 
destroyed itself and refused to call an impartial council to try the issue 
between them. If there were a church that made open profession of pro- 
faning the truth of the gospel, and trampling justice under foot, that despised 
and violated the rights and privileges of others whenever they found an 
opportunity, the interest of the whole denomination would justify and 
authorize a faithful few in such a church to withdraw therefrom after over- 
tures of settlement had been made by them and denied, for in so doing they 
act in conformity to all their duties, and therein consists the right. The 
right of preserving themselves, and refusing to suffer injustice is the sum 
total of the right of security and of religious liberty. 

This right is a perfect one, — that is to say it is accompanied with the 
right of peremptorily withdrawing from the church in order to assert it. 
In vain would the law of the gospel enjoin upon us the duty of contending 
for and preserving the faith once delivered to the saints, — in vain would 
this law oblige the church to abstain from corruptions, if we could not law- 
fully make use of this right, when the church refuses to discharge its whole 
duty, otherwise the faithful would be at the mercy of the unfaithful, and all 
their rights would soon become useless. If the body of the church absolutely 
fail to discharge its covenant obligations towards a member, the latter may 
withdraw himself provided he has resorted to all the means known to Bap- 
tist church jurisprudence to rectify the evils complained of For if one of 
the contracting parties to a covenant does not observe his engagements, the 
other is no longer bound to fulfill his, as the covenant is reciprocal between 



OK, THE COMMON LAW OF TRE GOSPEL. 467 

the churcli and its members. It is on the same principle that the church 
may excommunicate a member who violates its laws. If the majority of 
the church countenances the preaching of a doctrine heretical in its nature, 
or attempts to establish rules relative to matters in which the covenant can- 
not oblige every member to submisson, those who are averse to these matters 
have a right to quit the church and go elsewhere provided they can find a 
sister church willing to receive them. For instance, if the church or the 
greater part thereof, should employ and maintain a pastor notoriously un- 
sound in the faith, or should after trial shield and countenance a member in 
a scandalous life openly lived to the injury of the cause of Christ, or should 
subvert and overthrow some fundamental principle of church polity, those 
who will not partake of these errors have a right to withdraw. For, they 
cannot be supposed to have subjected themselves to the authority of men in 
affairs of conscience, and if the church suffers and is weakened by their 
departure, the blame must be imputed to those who have corrupted them- 
selves ; for it is they who fail in their observance of their covenant obliga- 
tions, it is they who violate it, and force the others to a separation. As to 
whether a church that has thus gone into heresies can return to its original 
status as a church, I think there is no question, so long as the Scriptures by 
Divine Providence are preserved in their integrity and authority as the law 
book of the church. Asa regenerate man can repent and return to the 
integrity of the faith, so a Baptist church, though never so far departed from 
the faith and practice of the gospel and over-run with disorders, is yet in 
the possibility of being reduced into its original status of a church of Christ, 
so long as the ancient laws of the gospel and fundamental elements are ex- 
tant, and remain inviolate, from which they may be directed how to make 
such a reformation. 

A man's obligations to his church may change, lessen or entirely vanish, 
according as he shall have quitted it lawfully and with good reason, in 
order to choose another of the same faith and order, or has been excluded 
from it deservedly, or unjustly, in due form of law, or wrongfully. A mem- 
ber or a number of members may quit a church of which they are members 
even where there is no apparent reason for so doing, provided they are in full 
fellowship and good standing and can do so without doing it a visible injury. 
But we must here draw a distinction between what may in strict propriety 
be done, and what is honorable and comformable to every Christian duty. A 
good and well-disposed member will never determine on such a step wdthout 
necessity or very strong reasons. It is taking a dishonorable advantage of 
one's church, to quit our brethren for no cause, or upon slight pretences, 
after having worshipped with, and derived considerable advantages from them. 
But should a minority withdraw from a church by reason of some heresy 
practiced by the church they need no reorganization to make them a church, 
for they themselves constitute the church as will be abundantly shown in 
in the next chapter when we come to treat of the property rights of a di- 
vided church. In their separation they do not leave the church, but only 
separate themselves from the heresies which destroyed the majority. But as 



468 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

has been heretofore stated, if a minority great or small should withdraw 
themselves from the body of the church which has not destroyed itself by 
heresy, but is only guilty of some mal-administration, they do not carry 
with them the status of a church, and before they can exercise the preroga- 
tives of a true church they need to be organized as such by a presbytery 
according to Baptist church customary law, for the church is the body of 
Christ and they who forsake it must forsake his subordination and relation 
to the church itself. A church may be guilty of disorders not fundamental, 
and the gates of hell not prevail against it, and continue still a church and 
bring forth much good fruit, as a member may hold some error and yet be 
still a true and pious member. There is but one sovereignty in every 
church, and that cannot be separated into two parts. One church is not 
involved in nor can it come out of another, but is an organic whole, and 
any fraction of the church separating itself from the whole cannot pretend 
to be, nor do they constitute a church without the forpaalities of organization 
and recognition by sister churches. 

When a church becomes divided into two factions, acting absolutely inde- 
pendently of each other, and no longer acknowledging a common superior, 
the unity of the church is broken. Whether a church be split into two fac- 
tions, either for justifiable causes or not, each maintaining that it alone con- 
stitutes the church proper, and though one of the parties may have been to 
blame in breaking this unity and resisting ecclesiastical authority, they are 
not the less divided in fact. There exists in the church two separate bodies 
who pretend to absolute independence, and between whom there is no ac- 
knowledged judge, and who mutually term each other schismatics. This 
being the case, it is very evident that the rules, customs and usages of the 
churches in the handling of these unhappy troubles ought to be observed 
by both parties. For the same reasons which render these maxims a matter 
of obligation between church and church, it becomes equally and even more 
necessary in the unhappy circumstance of two incensed parties lacerating 
their common church. Whenever, therefore, a numerous body of men in 
a disorderly church think they have a right to resist the church, and feel 
themselves justified in dividing the church, they ought to leave open every 
means of preventing outrageous extremities and for the restoration of peace, 
for it is a lamentable fact that of all the quarrels, those between brethren in 
the same church sometimes become the most violent. Such flames of dis- 
cord are not favorable to the procurement of pure and sacred justice. Hence 
all the benign rules and laws of the church ought to be resorted to in order 
to pacify and assuage the rigors of a church quarrel. The day of strict dis- 
cipline in Baptist churches is fast passing away. We have passed the period 
of restraint and attained the age of love and duty. Whether it be right 
or wrong, we have torn down and are fast tearing down the old church of 
the past with which is associated every form of restraint ; but how little do 
we understand the new ! How few understand or appreciate the glorious 
beauty of the coming temple ! Let us then cease to clamor for rights only, 
and let us not forget our duties. Let us cease to depend upon self-defense, 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 469 

but let us think more of brotherly love, duty and mutual help. The Scrip- 
tures everywhere insist upon duties rather than rights ; upon mutual help, 
rather than upon self-defense. The true spirit is a spirit of loving, helpful 
recognition of inferiority where it exists, and a loving recognition of superi- 
ority where it exists. Anything else would destroy all moral relations and 
ecclesiastical forms of government, and end in discord and disunion. 

Sister churches are not to interfere in the internal government, nor in the 
quarrels of an independent church. It belongs not to them to judge between 
the members of another church whom discord has divided. Both the church 
and the faction withdrawing are equally independent of their authority. 
They may, however, interpose their good offices for the restoration of peace 
and concord. Sister churches cannot convene a council, a convention or an 
association to try either the church or the refractory malcontents for sup- 
posed wrongs. But if their mediation proves fruitless, they may, with the 
view of regulating their own conduct, take the case into consideration, being 
their own judges, and commune or associate with that faction which they 
shall judge to have right on its side and which have, in their judgment, kept 
the faith and practice of the church pure, in case that party requests their 
assistance or accepts the proffered offer of it from sister churches. There 
can be no true union in a church of Christ, except upon the basis of 
brotherly love. It has no valid claim to be called unity, except in so far as 
we regard it in the light of charity. Unity is the expression of that love 
toward one another, which belongs to all true lovers of Christ. It has 
always been observed, and it is a most remarkable fact that Baptist churches 
in a state of discord, have been separated most widely by the very effort to 
coerce large numbers who submit to ecclesiastical censures unwillingly. The 
beginning of a church division has its commencement here. It is far better 
to letter off malcontents and let them go elsewhere, if they be sound in the 
faith and" otherwise pure in life, and willing to leave the church, than to try 
to force a union that is distasteful and unprofitable to both parties, notwith- 
standing they may not be in full fellowship one with another. Divisions are 
not prevented, but rather encourged and fostered, by attempting to arraign 
large numbers of disaffected members and compelling them to pursue a 
certain line of conduct, when they are not inwardly impelled to a real unity 
in these matters. Nothing else so hinders such a manifestation of unity as 
an attempt to compel members to allegiance to a dominant and domineering 
majority, and the individuals and churches that attempt these things are 
the most schism atical and the chief provokers and producers of actual 
schisms. The responsibility, the right and duty of determining this ques- 
tion rests with the faction who are to make the movement. It is at once 
perceived to be the most important and fearful ecclesiastical responsibility 
that is or can be presented to the consideration of an upright, pious body of 
members ; and they should decide it in the fear and admonition of the 
Lord ; not only so, but with due regard to the interests and rights of them- 
selves and the church from which they break away, but also with respect 
to the opinions of the denomination. If the churches, do but crush the spirit 



470 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

of jealousy and persecution — punish severely whoever shall dare to disturb 
others on account of the independence of their thoughts and actions, and 
we will come nearer seeing the members of all churches living in peace, and 
ambitious of advancing the cause of Christ. Church authority is appointed 
for the guidance of the churches in the edification of men in glorifying God, 
but rigid and severe discipline of large numbers counteracts that end, and 
ceases to be laudable on those occasions when it only produces divisions and 
gives offense. 

When a church is really desirous of peace, unity and agreement the dif- 
ficulties of arriving at this are seldom insurmountable ; while on the other 
hand the most trifling pretexts may serve as an excuse for the outbreak of 
quarrels, where either party is actually determined to divide the church. If 
rival factions instead of contending one with another would consent to settle 
differences by the intervention of a council, a far more just and equitable 
basis for a firm and permanent peace would be established through their de- 
liberations where moderation and equity prevail than by the chances of a 
trial of the delinquents, where often numbers, and not right, decide who is to 
triumph. Every church ought to watch attentively in order to prevent its 
disciplinary powers from being employed for sinister purposes, either by 
making use of it to gratify hatred or other passions, or the preaching of some 
heretical doctrine, to which the whole church cannot subscribe, in such a 
way as will divide the membership. No one should be permitted to abuse 
his privilege by hastily precipitating these deciplinary measures without first 
taking all the gospel steps to settle them, these affairs being altogether the 
most delicate and the most fruitful of dangers. The energies of the whole 
church should first be exhausted to prevent quarrels rather than cause divi- 
sions by hurriedly arraigning parties for prosecution. Christian patience and 
forbearance should be brought into exercise as these two noble qualities never 
occasion schisms in a church of Christ. This attention every church owes to 
her own happiness, repose and prosperity. Confusion, disorder and divi- 
sions will soon arise in a church when the membership are not sure of being 
dealt with fairly, and of easily and speedily obtaining justice in all their dis- 
putes, for without this all the Christian virtues of the membership will be- 
come deadened, and the church weakened. If men in church quarrels were 
always equally just, charitable and enlightened, these laws would doubtless 
be sufficient to keep the church in peace and prosperity. There may be 
anarchy in an individual member of a church as well as in the church itself, 
which results whenever a man throws off all rule and all due moral restraint 
and discipline, and not only contends for entire liberty of action, but con- 
ducts himself without regard to order or decorum. This, however, is the 
condition and the course of a religious anarchist, not of a converted man, or 
even of a man with the irtstincts of a common gentleman, but of one who 
deserves to be cut off from church privileges. A want of charity, the illu- 
sions of self-love and the violence of the passions, too often render these 
sabred laws ineffectual. Sometimes it is necessary, but very rarely, to devi- 
ate from this cautious and conciliatory course towards offenders in order to 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 471 

prevent arrogant abuses, and to accommodate ourselves to circumstances, 
since the covenant obligations have frequently so little influence on the 
hearts of some, discipline becomes necessary to give the laws their full effi- 
cacy and to maintain the dignity of church authority. And when once a 
sovereign church decides a case and has administered its rightful discipline 
no other church can meddle with its decrees. Every attempt to violate 
them is an assumption of arbitrary power, to which it cannot be presumed 
that any gospel church could have intended to subject itself. We should be 
ever ready to render our assistance when it is requested, and to avail our- 
selves of that of others when we really require it, and request them to ren- 
der it. Indeed, as each individual member lives, or should live not for him- 
self alone, but for others as well, and should be ever striving to benefit them 
as well as himself, so each church should, in a corresponding manner, carry 
on its aflairs not for its own advantage only, but for that of the whole de- 
nomination by which it is surrounded, and by whose condition it is ever 
necessarily more or less affected. 

These maxims, we trust, are not only dictated by justice and that forbear- 
ance which should prevail in every church of Christ so unfortunate as to be 
disturbed by discords, but also as forcibly recommended by prudence and the 
art of church government. A good church will keep a watchful eye over 
its disciplinary matters ; it will oblige every member to observe scrupulously 
the established forms of procedure, and will itself take care never to break 
through, nor to violate them. Every church that neglects, or violates the 
forms of justice in the prosecution of offenders, especially when large numbers 
are involved, makes large strides towards schisms and divisions ; and the 
security of the membership is at an end when once they come to be certain 
that they cannot be disciplined in their own church, in pursuance of the law^s 
of the gospel, and the customs and usages of the church, which secures to 
them the right to be tried by an impartial ecclesiastical council, should the 
parties to be tried ask the call of one for that purpose. Neither ought the 
trial of the accused to be committed to a packed council, chosen by the church 
itself, without the consent of those to be tried. This is a tyrannical practice 
of some churches by which the dominant faction in a divided church seeks to 
crush those whom discord has divided. A good church will never give its 
consent to such a proceeding if it has sufficient discernment to foresee the 
dreadful abuse ex-parte councils may make of it. Church offences ought to 
be measured according to the object of the offence, the injury to the church, 
and the malice of the delinquent ; hence offences against God should be 
deemed the most criminal; next, such as disturb the denomination; next, 
such as disturb the peace of the church ; and, lastly, those private offences 
between members of the same church. 

Nearly every truth in the Baptist confession of faith, every doctrine of the 
gospel fixed by her customs and usages is but a victory over a corresponding 
error and in a certain sense is its logical completeness. Near akin to heresy 
is the idea of a schism, or church division, which means a separation from 
the government and discipline of the church, and does not necessarily include 



472 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

a departure from her orthodoxy. Heresy as distinguished from schism con- 
sists in the adoption of opinions and practices contrary to the faith of the 
denomination, whereas a schism is a secession from the church of which the 
schismatic is a member, the renouncing of allegiance from its government, or 
forming of parties and factions within it. Then we see that a schism is not 
an offence particularly against the denomination, but against some particular 
church, and by its own members. For churches being independent establish- 
ments, may consult each other, and one may in a friendly way admonish 
another, but if they cannot agree the guilt is upon that church which is in 
disorder. Nevertheless, if a new church has been formed by the secession of 
members from another church on some disagreement of principles not in- 
volving heresy, each seceder is a schismatic, because of his former connection 
and his causeless separation therefrom, but if a church has been formed out 
of such material by the aid and with the assistance of sister churches in the 
customary way, the offence does not attach to the new church so formed nor 
entailed on succeeding members who are added to, or spring up in it. If, 
however, the schism was founded in heresy on the part of those withdrawing, 
the guilt of heresy would always attach to it, and its members, and the 
churches that lent their assistance to the formation of the new church would 
be partakers of the heresy. 

It cannot, therefore, be said that Baptists have no warrant for refusing to 
commune with disorderly persons and heretical churches. The same pre- 
cept that warrants a suspension from communion and withdrawal from a 
brother who walks disorderly, authorizes one church to give or refuse fel- 
lowship to another church in the administration of the ordinances. So it 
cannot be said that there is not a command for it, but that there is not an 
institution or example for it in the Scriptures. It is a duty, though not an 
act of authority. That which authorizes any Christian not to bid a heretic 
God speed, which it is not an act of jurisdiction, warrants this close and ex- 
clusive communion which Baptists have ever felt it to be their duty to prac- 
tice. That which warranted Timothy, being a minister, to guide and direct 
the churches. To turn away from sueh who having a form of godliness hut 
denying the power thereof authorizes also this non-communion which Bap- 
tist have ever practiced. Paul wrote this to his son Timothy by way of 
prophecy^ and so to all ministers and churches in the latter ages when all 
those train of evils should befall the churches of which in his letter he 
writes. When the churches of the world should thus depart from the faith, 
and being thus defiled by holding communion indiscriminately with churches 
having only a form of godliness although professing religion, from such the 
churches are bidden to turn away. What one apostle did to another in case 
of offence, the same one church may do to another upon the same ground. 
One apostle had no power to excommuuicate another in a way of censure; 
neither had Paul power to excommunicate Peter, or to admonish him in an 
authoritative way, but to admonish him by way of brotherly love which all 
brethren owe to one another, though he could not excommunicate him. 

Likewise one church in its watchfulness over the faith of sister churches 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 473 

should ao SO in the spirit of brotherly love and forbearance and so ful- 
fill the law of Christ. To love one another was the general law of Christ 
which he gave to his people. This is the sum of the whole law of the gospel. 
It is contrary to this law of love that they should lay burdens upon one an- 
other, for it was the award of the council held at Jerusalem : For it seemed 
good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burdens than 
these necessary things. To love our neighbor was a duty from the beginning, 
even from Adam down. Cain was the first who broke this law of love, and 
hated his brother because of his religion. And for that first breach of this 
law God parted Adam and Cain. So has Christ parted the good from the 
bad, the true from the false, and has builded a wall between them, and com- 
manded them from such to turn away. But those of the household of faith 
Christ has commanded to love one another and to bear one the others' bur- 
dens. He has likewise left his peace with his people. My peace Heave with 
you. But where does this peace lie ? Evidently in cases of differences be- 
tween brother and brother and church and church, for therein peace is 
greatest in demand. He foresaw that differences would be in his churches 
to the end of the world, and he urges this disposition towards peace, because 
so necessary in ordering and preserving his churches. So soon as he had 
ascended to Heaven they quarreled about circumcision, and had not Christ 
left this law of love and peace among them where would his true churches 
have been ? 

This transcendent law of love and peace which Christ left as the rule of 
his church was given because he foresaw all the differences which arose in 
the very first times of the churches, and saw that peace and love were neces- 
sary to begin, to continue and preserve his churches. He did not put a rod 
into the hand of the churches to rule one over another, but planted them in 
the gracious soil of brotherly love and peace, and waters them with the dews 
of divine grace, that men may know that they are indeed a peculiar people, 
and are truly his disciples. If this great law of love and peace which Christ 
breathed upon his people just before ascending to Heaven will not cement 
them in the bonds of a perfect union, and preserve them from the errors so 
prevalent in this life, no bonds of a false and perverted politic organization 
can do so, and it matters not how much human wisdom may be displayed in 
setting it up. 

Peace and brotherly love is the natural state of every true church of the 
loving God. If there should unfortunately exist in a church anything 
other than these blessings it cannot be said that a church is fulfilling its 
mission on earth, and it behooves them to reflect seriously as to where the 
evil lies and restore unto themselves the joys of brotherly love and fellow- 
ship. For it is the part of rational Christian men and women to terminate 
their differences in a divided church in a rational way ; whereas, it is the 
unfortunate disposition of the contentious to settle theirs by quarrels, dis- 
sensions and unhappy divisions. Members of our free and independent 
churches without a large portion of the grace of God in their hearts and 
without thoi charity that suffer eth long and is kind, would necessarily be in 



474 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHTTECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

a very wretched condition when in a state of turmoil and division. They 
stand in need of the intercourse, assistance and prayers of the wise and good 
in order to dispose them to peace and brotherly love that they may enjoy 
the sweets of a purely religious life, to develop all the Christian graces and 
love in a manner suitable to their gracious opportunities. Now, it is in a 
state of peace that all these advantages are to be found ; it is in peace that 
men respect, assist and love each other ; nor would they ever depart from 
that happy state, if they would but reflect a moment as to who they are, 
and the great price with which they have been bought, if they were 
not hurried on by the impetuosity of their passions, andblinded by the gross 
deception of their self love. Churches that are really composed of regener- 
ate men and women, that seriously and religiously attend to their duty and 
are acquainted with their true and substantial interests will never seek to 
promote their own advantage at the expense and detriment of peace and 
fellowship. Thus disposed they will necessarily cultivate peace. If they do 
not Kve together in a state of peace how can they perform those mutual and 
sacred duties which our common Saviour has enjoined upon them. Thus, 
this state of peace is bound to be no less necessary to their happiness than to 
the discharge of their duties. Thus it is that the law of the gospel every 
way obliges them to seek and cultivate brotherly love and peace, among 
them. That divine law has no other end in view than the welfare of those 
who unite to keep house for the Lord ; to that object all its rules and all its 
precepts tend ; they are all deducible from this principle, that regenerate 
men who profess to love the Lord supremely should love one another and 
seek their own felicity and happiness to the end that peace and love should 
reign supreme in their hearts. 

This obligation of cultivating brotherly love in a church binds the church 
by a double tie. The church owes it to itself, on whom discords and divi- 
sions pour a torrent of misery and evil. But one church owes the same 
attention and consideration to sister churches, whose happiness likewise is 
disturbed by church quarrels and divisions. This obligation on the part of 
churches to cultivate peace and fraternal feeling, is the foundation of the 
denominational tranquillity and the firmest support of the healthy spiritual 
condition of the whole denomination. Everything is uncertain, violent and 
subject to discords and divisions in those unhappy churches where arbitrary 
power, on the part of a majority or minority, is sought to be wielded. The 
church ought not only to refrain, on their own part, from disturbing that 
peace which is so salutary to the denomination, but they are moreover bound 
to promote it, as far as lies in their power, in sister churches, and to inspire 
them with the love of peace by their good offices, their good advice and 
kindly admonitions. What a glorious and amiable character is the peace- 
maker ! No Baptist church ought to stand idly by and see a sister church 
rent in tv/ain by discords without some effort to stay the tide which, if taken 
in time, may prove the salvation of the church. For experience teaches 
that a violent church quarrel entails calamities even upon sister churches 
that are not immediately engaged in it, and sometimes so fierce are these 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 475 

dissensions that they disturb the whole denomination. Often sister churches, 
whom neither of the contending parties in a divided church have any 
occasion to suspect as being biased in favor of one party as against the otiier, 
can step in and thus reconcile the church and put a period to the conten- 
tion. Baptist churches that have the free disposal of their internal affairs 
may intrust a single person, usually their pastors or several friendly and 
pious messengers, with the power of agreeing upon terms of settlement, 
although they have not the power to transfer to such a body the right to 
enforce such agreement. It does not belong to any sister church to set 
herself up for a judge of the conduct of a sister church and to oblige that 
church to alter or amend it. If the church thus offering its overtures of 
assistance should fail to reconcile their differences, then it would be well to 
advise the calling of a council to undertake the settlement of the troubles 
after the well-established customs of the denomination laid down in another 
place in this treatise. A serious intention and purpose on the part of a di- 
vided church to do justice, and to meiit in all their actions the approbation 
of an infinitely wise Saviour, cannot fail of inducing both parties to join in 
the call of a mutual council to adjust the difficulties, for it is the only 
pledge and hope of the church's safety known to Baptist church jurispru- 
dence. But the parties in a divided church, who acknowledge no superior 
here below, what security can they have if they yield not to the importuni- 
ties of well-meaning brethren to submit to the call of a council to be mutu- 
ally agreed upon to adjust those matters which they cannot, or have not, the 
disposition to settle themselves, and to thus unite the maxims of sound policy 
with those of justice and religion. 

But when we speak of peace and the unity of charity, it should never be 
attained at the sacrifice of the truth. When w^e plead for forbearance, our 
meaning is not that the churches should remain indifferent to the truth of 
the gospel and the faith once delivered to the saints. "When it comes to a 
clmrch teaching a doctrine contrary to the fundamental truths of salvation, 
one church ought not for one moment to bear with churches thus offending, 
but should promptly take such measures as will show to the world, and es- 
pecially to Christ, the founder of the churches, that they are not partakers 
of their sins by entering into communion and inter-communion with them. 
Churches must and should be able to make a distinction between heresy and 
schisms. Faith hath a deadly opposite — ^that is, heresy. Contrary to the 
unity of the church, is separation and division. This unity or oneness of 
will, faith and practice is effected by charity, uniting all the members of the 
church in one organic body ; contrary to which is schism or division. 
Schism is a voluntary separation from the unity, whereby all the members 
of the church are united. Therefore, we learn, that schism is a vice, distinct 
from heresy, because they are opposite to two different virtues — heresy to 
faith, and schism to unity and charity Heretics corrupt the faith by 
believing of God false things. Schismatics, by wicked divisions, break away 
from fraternal unity, although they are true to the faith of the gospel and 
believe what we do. Nevertheless, as he who is unsound in faith or is de- 



476 A TREATISE UPON- BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

prived thereof, must want charity and unity, so every heretic is a schismatic, 
but, conversely, every schismatic is not a heretic, although sometimes 
schism degenerates to heresy if the spirit thereof be not checked, and by 
that means they are indeed bothi schismatics and heretics. Hence churches, 
in dealing with these intricate subjects, ought to be able to discern between 
heresy and mere schisms, which only divides the church, but leaves their 
faith entire. With an heretical church there should be no compromise 
whatever. 

When matters are brought to this posture in Baptist church government, 
either the author of the faction, which in this case is the church itself, or the 
faction, must suffer. A part of a flock cannot subsist under a shepherd 
that seeks its ruin and will not lead them into wholesome pastures, nor can 
an upright minority in a corrupted church hope to preserve itself under an 
unjust and unfaithful church. The good shepherd, says our Saviour, lays 
down his life for his sheep ; the hireling in time of danger is represented in 
a reprehensible character, but he that would destroy the flock is likened unto 
a wolf. The authority of the ruling majority in a disturbed and distracted 
church is incompatible with justice and fair dealing, and whosoever dis- 
approves of a division in a church by which such a majority may be resisted 
and rebuked, subverts the foundation of all law, exalts the fury of the many 
to the destruction of the few ; and giving an irresistible power to wrong and 
injustice exposes all that is good to be injured, and the true faith of the 
gospel to be corrupted and extinguished. If it be said that the word faction 
implies that which is evil, we answer that it ought not then to be applied to 
those who seek nothing but what is just. And though the ways of deliver- 
ing an oppressive minority from the violence of an unjust church be extra- 
ordinary, if their cause be just, the righteousness of the act fully justifies the 
authors. They who have the virtue and power to resist injustice and save 
themselves can never want the power of doing it. Their acts always carry 
in themselves their own justification. If a church, for instance, fall into 
gross heresies or some gross mal-ad ministration which undermines the very 
foundations of the church, if this be not enough to justify those who resist 
such a wrong on the part of their church, the examples of holy men raised 
up by God for the deliverance of his people from their oppressors decide the 
question. Suppose there had not been such men in the olden times of the 
churcShes, when there was a first departure from apostolic church govern- 
ment what would have become of the purity of apostolic government ? They 
were renowned for their love of and adherence to the truth, and for having 
led the true lovers of the truth by extraordinary ways to recover their 
ecclesiastical liberties, and to avenge the wrongs done the church of the 
living God. The work of the apostles was not in their time to set up or pull 
down any civil state, but they so behaved themselves in relation to all the 
powers of the earth both civil and ecclesiastical, that they gained the name 
of pestilent, seditious fellows, and disturbers of the people, and left it as an 
inheritance to those who in succeeding ages by following their steps should 
deserve to be called their successors. These are some of the times and cir- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 477 

cumstances under which it is eminently proper to call a council if the 
membership have a mind to allay such troubles and to save the church and 
the denomination the sad spectacle of schisms and divisions. These trouble- 
some commotions that sometimes arise in churches only produce persecutions 
and intolerance a thousand times more dangerous to Baptist church govern- 
ment than anything else imaginable. Churches ought to lose no time to 
bring these unhappy troubles to a peacable termination. If the church 
neglect these weighty matters and spend their time in quarreling over things 
useless to the salvation of souls she need expect to witness those horrible dis- 
orders so destructive to her peace that vex and crucify the membership, and 
which so often bring Baptist church government into ridicule. 

Really it cannot be a matter of surprise, when we consider the free and 
independent nature of Baptist church government, and the multiplicity of 
these churches, and the utter want of ecclesiastical ties to bind them together, 
that there should be many divisions and much confusion in them, aud that 
the wholesome control of church government should be perpetually threat- 
ened. This freedom and independence sets in motion a host of interests and 
opinions which by this straitened condition, are disarmed of the power to 
change the doctrine or polity of the churches, or to do any immediate mis- 
chief, but not sufficiently so to prevent the churches from being infested 
with a multitude of troubles. Except in the case of Baptist church govern- 
ment, and in these churches until very modern times, the popular mind was 
unaccustomed to meddle with the subject of doctrine. But here in these 
churches we have the happy spectacle of a people who grapple with truth 
and religious creeds with the same freedom which the outside world em- 
ploys in attacking politicial opinions. All, the highest as well as the hum- 
blest, are called upon to take in the government of the churches, as well as 
the unlimited range of inquiry, subjects everything to the most fearless and 
rigid examination. Many very intelligent persons seeking church connec- 
tions, and who are inclined to look favorably upon the doctrine of Baptist 
churches, and the deep root it is taking in the world, when they behold the 
troubles we sometimes encounter, and into which we sometimes plunge our- 
selves, they recoil from it with dismay, and are disposed to take refuge in 
what they denominate a strong church government. Nevertheless, it is 
most certain that the distinguishing excellence of Baptist church polity, con- 
sists in its giving birth to freedom of thought and liberty of conscience, and 
that the little annoyances and inconveniences which these principles occasion 
in the churches are productive of incalculable advantages. It is a great 
mistake, with our knowledge of human nature and church government, to 
suppose that the churches would be better ordered if their surface were a 
perfect calm. 

The fact is, the principles of Baptist church government and doctrine 
came not into the world to bring peace. When first established by Christ 
and his apostles nothing before ever created such commotion. It required a 
brave, a fearless and an earnest set of men to plant them, and to foster thera 
to full grown maturity. The human mind, with all its capabilities of thought 



478 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

and action, is wonderfully disposed to listlessness and inertia ; so that it re- 
quires the most powerful incentives in order to rouse its dormant energies. 
And the condition of the great majority of mankind is such, that none but 
the most sensible interests which touch them on every side can be relied 
upon as the instrument of moving them. By giving a full and free play, 
and a favorable direction to these. Baptists succeed in imparting life, activ- 
ity and energy, to church government. And this being attained, a great 
amount of thought and reflection is sure to be developed among the great 
bulk of the denomination. A factious spirit at the bottom is but the con- 
flict of diflerent opinions, to each of which, in nearly every case, some por 
tion of truth almost invariably adheres. Therefore it is, that in every era 
in the history of the world when these conflicts, whether religious, philoso- 
phical, or political have been the fiercest, has always been one of spiritual 
and intellectual advancement. As the interests of private persons under 
this system of polity become more and more identified with those of the 
churches of which they are members, each one has a desire and a motive for 
understanding and taking part in the public affairs of the churches. The 
question in church government is, never whether any particular arrange- 
ment shuts out all causes of divisions, but only whether it excludes the 
greatest practicable amount, and not of one kind merely, but of all kinds. 
The contentions and quarrels of factious are not thus entirely extinguished ; 
but there is, notwithstanding, a greater degree of denominational tranquil- 
lity than would otherwise exist. 

Ecclesiastical power in Baptist church government is of a totally diflerent 
character from what it is in all papal, episcopal or presbyterian forms of 
government ; hence there must be a corresponding diflerence in the ma- 
chinery which sets each of them respectively in motion. In these hierarchical 
forms of government there are the various orders and degrees of the clergy, 
from which a system of checks and balances is derived, to secure the influ- 
ence of ecclesiastical authority, and to maintain each department in its 
proper place; but such an expedient would be futile and powerless where 
church government means vastly more than the rule of the priesthood, and 
the persons who fill the various public oflices. In Baptist church polity 
ecclesiastical powers are equally distributed and designedly communicated 
to the whole membership. We want something more, therefore, than a sys- 
tem of checks and balances such as flow from the ministry within the 
churches. As the forces which are set in motion are so much more exten- 
sive we must contrive some machinery equally extensive for the purpose of 
controlling and regulating them. And thus those who have diflerent inter- 
ests and different shades of opinions, very naturally, not to say necessarily, 
take the place of that unscriptural system of checks and balances which are 
well enough adapted to the' universal church, but which play only a sub- 
ordinate part in Baptist church government. In Baptist church jurispru- 
dence parties have no existence. Factions there may be, but not parties, 
because they are overborne by an extraneous influence which disables them 
from representing denominational opinion. The membership themselves 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 479 

compose all the existing parties. Hence differences of opinions arc not only 
submitted to examination, but they are submitted to the examination of 
those who are immediately affected by them. But the greater the number 
of persons who are consulted with regard to any measure, which has any 
important bearing upon their interests, the greater is the probability that it 
will be adjusted with a view to their common welfare and with which they 
will be satisfied, those who consented as well as those who dissented. It is 
a rule by the majority to which the minority must consent. 

When factions in a church, that is to say, ruling majorities and minori- 
ties, are not subjected to a strict accountability they becom.e a law unto 
themselves ; they create a standard of opinion within their own circle, which 
necessarily weakens the force of that general opinion, whose office it is to 
watch over the actions of all the functionaries of church government. While 
it sometimes becomes the duty of the leading and more influential members 
of the churches to consult, apart from the body of the church, to shape and 
direct the business to be transacted therein, yet not unfrequently the unskill- 
ful handling of these interests foments disorders and arouses factions in op- 
position to them. For all these interests must ultimately come before the 
whole church for action, and there is nothing to prevent the humblest mem- 
ber from a full and free expression of his views. Hence the temper and 
disposition of men become inflamed as well as their understandings en- 
lightened. Indeed, the whole business and conduct of the affairs of a church 
is never under the immediate control of the leading men alone who shape 
them for action, but all should share in the control of church affairs. It thus 
initiates the membership into an acquaintance with the practical workings of 
the churches and its business, and founds their attachment to the church 
upon their interests. All other systems are without these advantages. The 
conduct of church affairs, and the actions of those who take part in them, 
are made up of an infinite number of acts, each of which may be in itself 
inconsiderable, and yet the aggregate of incalculable importance. The vot- 
ing class in Baptist churches are the governing classes which happily 
embraces the whole church. By them everything must at last be done. 
And it may be insisted that when we reflect upon the perfect security and 
equality which this system insures we will be unwilling to exchange it for 
any other ; that we will be more strongly impressed with the advantages 
which it has in producing internal quiet and contentment, and inspiring an 
instinctive obedience to the laws of the church. Thus the popular mind of 
the membership sanctions all the symbols and insignia of legitimate rule and 
authority with the same sort of veneration and respect which contributes to the 
upholding of the artificial forms of all other systems of church government. 

The absence of differences of opinion upon all questions in a system of 
church polity, would imply the existence of absolute unanimity on all 
occasions. But in the imperfect condition of man, when we consider how 
apt he is to err, unanimity would not be desirable. As" in the individual, 
one faculty is set over against another, in order to elicit the greatest amount 
of judgment, wisdom, and experience, so the natural encounter and conflict 



480 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; 

of rival opinions in a church constitutes a discipline of the same character, 
on a much larger scale. Unanimity, which has the appearance of being the 
only rightful rule, would, if it were conceivable, render the church absolutely 
stationary. Man is not born with knowledge, neither do all men see the 
truth alike, how much soever they may try to view it from the same stand- 
point. All of the useful or noble qualities which one ever exerts are the off- 
spring of variety, and not uniformity in every particular. Constituted as 
Baptists are, there would be no virtue nor truth without some conflict of 
interests, and no wisdom without some conflict of opinions. In view of this 
state of things one very important fact arises : that although the majority 
rule, the minority, by virtue of the naked power which belongs to opinions 
and the power thereof, are able to exert an inherent and yet a very decisive 
influence upon " the conduct of church affairs. This influence is so great, 
that no one who has been accustomed to examine the workings of church 
government can fail to have been struck with the repeated instances in 
which the opinions of a minority have triumphed over those of the majority • 
80 as ultimately to become the settled and established opinions of the church, 
and transformed the minority into the majority. Hence, so far as effective 
and permanent influence is concerned, it is of little consequence whether a 
certain line of policy to be pursued is first suggested by the minority or the 
majority. The fact that it is right and useful gives it a claim to success, 
and that success is almost infallible. The beauty of Baptist church govern- 
ment is that when opinions have to pass through a great number of minds 
before they are reduced to practice, the churches do not experience a violent 
shock, as it does upon their sudden and unpremeditated adoption. In all 
matters of detail factions stir the passions of men, but in matters of grave 
importance such as faith and doctrine, they introduce the conflict of opinions. 
The struggle of new opinions is the longest protracted, whenever the general 
state of denominational opinion is least prepared for an important change in 
the existing conditions of things, especially whenever agitation, discussion, 
and the encounter of rival opinions, is most necessary. For to contend over 
these matters would be without meaning and utility, if they were eternally to 
battle with each other with no other result than the alternate loss and 
acquisition of victory over one another. The desire to obtain the ascendency 
may be the moving cause and spring which actuates each; but fortunately 
this spring cannot be set in motion in a Baptist church, without rousing a 
prodigious amount of reflection among the membership, they being accustomed 
to handle these questions themselves. But the moment these opinions are 
promulgated, they are subjected to a searching examination, because they 
are felt to have a practical bearing upon the substantial interests cf all. 
The true office of factions in a church then is to elicit and make manifest the 
amount of truth which belongs to the tenets of each ; so that the great body 
of the church, who have not taken sides with either faction may both be 
easily and understandingly guided in the decision they must make of the 
question at dispute. 

When we speak of factions, we do not use that term in any offensive way, 



OE, THE COMMON" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 481 

but in the sense of majorities and minorities in a disturbed cLurcli contend- 
ing about some matter of common interest to them all. Any one who has 
grown up in Baptist churches, and who has made an accurate observation 
of the structure of their government, and tTie disposition of the members 
who compose them, must have noticed that there is a constant tendency 
towards what may be called the supremacy, or precedence of individuals 
composing the churches. These will, perhaps, be composed of the older 
members, or perhaps of professional men, who hold themselves up as leaders 
in the churches. But many circumstances, however, in the course of time, 
contribute to weaken or entirely to break up this condition of things. When 
any body of men, no matter how wide or how narrow the sphere of their 
influence may be, have maintained a certain degree of precedence for a con- 
siderable time, those who compose it become arrogant in themselves and 
among others by making a show of their influence and power. This being 
the case, it leads very naturally to the crumbling of the faction, and to the 
formation of new opinions and new factions. Quarrels and disputes in 
churches only give occasion to this condition of aflfairs, and often aflbrd a 
plausible ground for open contentions, when in truth the actuating motives 
are of a strictly personal character, in which individuals are arrayed against 
one another — often the new members against the old — often the talented 
and ambitious against the supine and unintelligent. Often the new men 
will not succeed in getting the mastery ; but they, notwithstanding, will 
work a great change in the mode of thinking of the opposite faction, and it 
serves as a balance-wheel in government ; for even ineffectual opposition 
may sometimes have a very advantageous influence. It wakes up those 
against whom it is directed ; it leads them to soften or correct their defects ; 
otherwise they cannot maintain the ascendancy they hold in the church. 

It is of very great importance that this, the ugly side of Baptist church 
government, should be thoroughly studied by every one. We thus gain a 
clearer insight into the origin, character and fluctuations of those disorders 
which sometimes disturb the peace and tranquillity of the churches. It is 
sometimes as necessary to study the physiology of Baptist church govern- 
ment, in order to understand the workings of ecclesiastical polity, as it is to 
study the physiology of man, in order to penetrate the character of the in- 
dividual. These things we are bound to know and to understand only to 
draw instructions from them. To some, if this view of the weak side of 
our churches does not present a very flattering picture, it at least shows that 
through the instrumentality of even church quarrels, important changes for 
the better are brought about imperceptibly, if not very peacefully. A free 
and independent form of church government, like that of the Baptist, is 
not, therefore, so liable to those terrible shocks, which, in other systems, are 
necessary to sweep away church abuses. In those systems that have pre- 
siding elders, presbyters, bishops, cardinals and popes to rule them, what 
can a faction or a party, large or small, do to correct what they consider de- 
fects in church government ? Nothing less than a veritable upheaval would 
ever change abuses heaped upon them. In these hierarchical forms of 
31 



482 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

government the great bulk of the membership are mere figure-heads, mere 
spectators, not actors ; and the operations of factions and minorities are con- 
fined to a very narrow circle. But Baptist church government presupposes 
that the great mass of the membership are active,not passive and idle citizens 
in the commonwealth of Israel, and these members not only regulate the con- 
duct of the handful of men who sometimes assume to dictate to the church, but 
they regulate also the whole denomination, who, though not of the same mem- 
bership, yet they constitute the springs which set church government in 
motion. If this were not the case, if there were no regulative principle to 
shake the churches, and to overturn factions, and to overthrow their abuses, 
as well as to act upon church government and to keep it true to itself, there 
would be no way of maintaining the free institution of Christ's churches on 
earth, and to keep pure the doctrine which he committed to their keeping. 
Hence, we see, that there is really no such thing as entire compulsion in 
Baptist church government ; and that if, in a church divided in sentiment, 
a course of conduct, even by a contending minority, has won over a majority 
of the votes of a church, a very considerable portion of truth, to say the 
least, must belong evidently to that party thus contending for it. 

Differences of opinion between members of a church such as ours, local and 
independent in its nature, ought not to justify any great alarm among Bap- 
tists, Inability to agree is one of the incidents of political, religious; social, 
scientific and business organizations. It is not more strange that members 
of the same church should often be at odds on a measure touching church 
affairs than that men in all other relations should fall out with each other in 
the management of other interests. To say the least of it, disagreements and 
divisions are continually happening, and will continue to happen until we 
get close up to the millennial period. Disputes, quarrels, bolts, schisms and 
other infelicities are looked-for occurrences, but occasional and unavoidable 
incidents. These unhappy occurrences are so frequent in free and independ- 
ent Baptist churches as to cause little anxiety. The great cause in which 
this great denomination is interested goes right on in spite of these manifest- 
ations of the old Adam. If a church divides after failing to adjust a differ- 
ence, we have two churches competing in good works, and the result is often 
advantageous and is doubtless sometimes Providential. And not unfre- 
quently, if a little error is at the bottom of these upheavals and disruptions, in 
the end, the truth which stands over against the error practiced, only shines 
the brighter. On the whole therefore, it seems to be a very natural thing, and 
one that does not call for any alarm for, or abuse, or denunciation of Baptist 
church government, that the members of our churches should sometimes but 
very rarely, differ about those ecclesiastical matters in which the members 
of other systems have no voice, and over which they are not permitted to 
have any control. 

Above all things a church being in the midst of unhappy divisions ougl.t 
to be careful not to let their differences pass over into private life. It is 
delightful to see brethren who assiduously oppose one another upon con- 
,&cientious grounds, remaining in a state of brotherly love and friendly pri- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 483 

vate intercourse, a circumstance which can take place only where there is 
great forbearance and charity. It is the best evidence in the world that 
brethren have passed from death unto life. For brotherly love accustoms 
brethren to respect the opinions of others, while the want of it so thoroughly 
weans us from this Christ-hke virtue, that if, for any reason, dissensions do 
break out, it is invariably vehement and passionate, and every opponent is 
at once considered as an enemy. If this is the case let brethren pause and 
ask themselves, Am I a Christian ? If we know we have passed from death 
unto life, because we love the brethren, ought it not to be equally evident that 
we have 7iot passed from death unto life because we hate the brethren ? Then 
let no brother foment the spirit of dissension, while it is the duty of every 
member to assuage discord, and allay ecclesiastical strife as much as pos- 
sible. It is very true, indeed, that our danger is not so great now as in the 
former times, because our system of church jurisprudence is beginning to be 
better understood, because our churches are becoming more orderly and 
wiser, we value our free system of government higher, and above all we are 
becoming more charitable one to another. Let us, then, upon this ground 
among so many others, value and foster the more earnestly our form of 
church polity in which every member, however high or low he may be in 
intelligence is a ruler as well as one of the ruled. 

But lastly, there is one thing very noticeable about Baptist church 
divisions, they never result in the setting up of new churches of a difierent 
faith and order. Other denominations are divided and sub-divided into in- 
numerable bodies, and some of these seceding sects even in time outnumber- 
ing those they leave behind, thus becoming, indeed, permanent and incurable 
schismatics by rending the body of Christ in twain. Baptist churches not 
being welded together in an organic union, may one part separate from the 
other, and under the free and independent apostolic system, the party seced- 
ing in the' absence of heresy, may organize and live under the same laws of 
the gospel, all believing the same things, and remain churches of the same 
faith and order, because there is no tribunal in the denomination charged 
with power to keep them out or to make them afraid. Hence Baptists may 
divide up, but they continue Baptists, but when others divide there is no 
place in the economy of the hierarchical church for them. Think of a 
division in a Methodist or Presbyterian church, the recalcitrant part seced- 
ing from the mother church, and independently, in and of themselves, setting 
up a church, and in spite of the conference or synod, becoming a church of 
Christ ! Such parts of a divided church would, at once, become and forever 
remain schismatics, living forever without the pale of the church. Other- 
wise they must surrender their individuality and self-independency, return 
to the church from which they came, or were ruthlessly thrust, and profess 
to be in full fellowship and believe it not, and be compelled to live in a 
perpetual lie, and thus to dissemble against their own conscience. Men 
rebel against men, often, rather than against God or their church. A church 
is not a prison house in which to detain a man or a faction of men against 
their wills, and to separate from the church leaving it in peace and harmony 
is often a less sin than to remain in it to the disturbance of the whole body. 



484 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 



CHAPTER XVII. 

PROPERTY EIGHTS OF A DIVIDED BAPTIST CHURCH — COMMON LAW RULES 

GOVERNING SAME. 

THE vast and rapidly increasing amount of property held by Baptist 
churclies in this country renders a knowledge of the tenure by which 
it is secured and held a matter of grave importance to laymen who have the 
custody of this class of property and who should be somewhat familiar with 
the laws under whose authority they act. In so brief a space as a few pages 
allotted to this subject we cannot do more than give a brief account of the 
common law rules relating to this subject, which we hope will serve all prac- 
tical purposes. 

We cannot proceed without to some extent going over a part of the 
ground commonly traversed in the treatment of the subject of ecclesiastical 
heresy, for the belief of that in a minister, which destroys him as an ortho- 
dox Baptist, if a Baptist church practices the same will likewise destroy it 
as a church of Christ. In a minister heresy consists in publicly preaching, 
writing or printing any false opinion repugnant to, and subversive of Bap- 
tist church government, concerning some point of doctrine absolutely essen- 
tial to Christian faith revealed in the Scriptures. In a church this false 
opioion consists in persistently and authoritatively allowing the same to be 
preached or taught. For until a church has broken the faith and departed 
from the doctrine, or polity of the churches, can any question as to the 
property rights of its members become the subject matter of a suit at law. 

In the first place the law does not take cognizance of any church, oi 
church aifairs, in respect to its doctrinal peculiarities, nor does its denomina- 
tional character affect its civil rights. The courts may, however, inquire 
into those matters when questions concerning property rights call for it. 
The statutes of the various States, if any, which regulate the incorporation 
of churches, and the management of their affairs, have reference alone to 
their temporal concerns. Such laws, although they declare that the deacons 
or trustees shall be a body corporate, a view of such laws and the current 
authority, as well as the popular opinion, sustains the position that the con- 
gregation, and not the trustees, are incorporated. The relation which the 
trustees bear to the church is not that of private trustees to the cesiuis qui 
trust, but that of directors to the civil corporation. They are nothing more 
than the managing officers of the property, invested, as to its temporal affairs, 
with such particular powers as are specified in the act of incorporation, also 
within the sphere of their appropriate duties with such discretionary powers 
as may properly be exercised by officers of any other corporation. There- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 485 

fore, whatever property is acquired is vested in the church aggregate and 
not in the trustees. Whatever possession the trustees have of the church is 
the possession of the church itself. Although they are styled trustees they 
do not hold the property in trust. Their name is simply the title of their 
office, and their position is the same as if they had been called directors or 
managers. Their right to interfere with the property is only an authority, 
and not an interest, or an estate. Hence any legal proceedings affecting the 
property should be conducted in the name of the church and not of the church 
trustees ; and any transfer or conveyance, when sanctioned by the church, 
should also be in the name of the church, signed by the trustees for the 
church. There is a common mistake in making conveyances to the trustees 
of a church ; the word trustees should never be used in the body of a con- 
veyance. The proper title is the name of the church, just as when the con- 
veyance is to an individual the name should be stated. 

Incorporated churches are not regarded in law as ecclesiastical corpora- 
tions, but as civil corporations governed by the principles of the common 
and statute law. At common law every church has the capacity to purchase 
and alien lands and chattels, unless restrained by their charters. The 
trustees can bind the church within their authority, and in order to execute 
that power, they must convene as a board, at which a majority must be 
present. When convened, a majority of the quorum present is competent 
to make valid their action. The separate action of the trustees individually, 
although a majority in number should agree upon it, would not be legally 
the act of the constituted body clothed with the corporate powers. The 
property of the church cannot be distributed by the trustees among the 
members, nor can the members themselves, or the courts of law sanction such 
a distribution. Church houses are sometimes let, or permitted to be used, 
for purposes other than those for which they were erected. Such casual or 
occasional use is not objectionable, provided it does not interfere with the 
rights or convenience of the congregation. It cannot, however, be carried 
to such an extent as to amount to a perversion of the legitimate ends for 
which the property is held. 

Now courts of justice, in taking cognizance of the affairs of a church, have 
decided, and all the authorities tend to establish the doctrine, that there are 
two kinds of laws prevalent in these religious bodies — the one immutable 
and the other voluntary. The immutable laws are such as are fundamental 
in their nature, and are so called because they are unalterable and indestruc- 
tible, and are so just, equitable and necessary at all times, and in all places, 
that no human or ecclesiastical authority can either change or abolish them, 
for they have their intrinsic authority in and from themselves, and are 
grounded, rooted, and nourished, not only in the Holy Scriptures, but in the 
common law of the land. They are such which being taken away the 
church fails, and is utterly dissolved as a building whose foundation is 
destroyed and with it its property rights are swept away. While the 
voluntary laws of the churches are such customs as are changeable in their 
nature, and have been held to be such as each church may, from time to 



486 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

time adopt, alter or abolish as there is occasioD, and to do which will not 
destroy or impair the foundation upon which rests the fabric of church 
government. They are such as are flexible and may be differently esta- 
blished and quite abolished without violatiug the letter or spirit of the 
Scriptures, and which churches may exercise without destroying either the 
church or its property rights. 

Besides, there are some principles relating to both doctrine and polity in 
Baptist church government that are absolutely essential and necessary to be 
believed, to change which is not only a transgression of the divine law, but 
also shows a contempt of God, the divine legislator, but also of all human 
law itself. For such contempt is a breach of all laws at once, not only those 
fundamental, but those not so. An ecclesiastical law fundamental in a 
Baptist church is that, therefore, which being taken away the church is 
utterly destroyed. A law not fundamental is that, the abrogation whereof 
draws not with it the dissolution of the church, such as the laws concerning 
ordinary cases of discipline and other matters of maladministration of church 
affairs, not sounding in heresy or a departure from the faith of the gospel. 
Every Baptist church is obliged to obtain a just and true conception of both 
the religion and polity of the primitive churches, to study God's word con- 
cerning the same, and to take nothing on trust from others, unless tried by 
the severest tests of the Scriptures themselves. A new fangled religion 
ought to be received as from the devil, cautiously, lest mischief be hidden 
under it. We should be essentially and necessarily free to make use of our 
choice in matters of religion, but having once subscribed to the tenets of the 
church, and the church once having erected a standard of belief, in common 
with the whole denomination of which it is a part, should they suffer that 
standard torn down, to the end that there is no oneness of faith it can no 
longer claim to be a Baptist church ; in other words it has destroyed itself 
and is neither a church nor is it the church. Therefore this treatise upon 
Baptist church jurisprudence would be incomplete without compiling some 
of the legal maxims relating to ecclesiastical heresy, or orthodoxy, as the 
case may be, as applied to a church, from which church members may be 
enabled to decide which party in a divided church is entitled to church 
property, where such questions are raised in suits at law. To supply this 
demand and at the same time to keep this chapter within the dimensions of 
a few pages, will be our present aim. 

We have not in this country a regular ecclesiastical establishment, as 
they have in England, and if we had, the rules relating to the English 
establishment would not apply to cases arising under Baptist church govern- 
ment; and yet the importance of religious worship and rights of property is 
recognized by the laws of the several States, and especially by the common 
law of the land, and church organizations are encouraged and protected by 
the statutes and judicial decisions, so that a well defined system, peculiar to 
this country, is now pretty well established. However it would be well to 
lay this dowr as a general principle, that over the churches, as such, courts 
of justice do not in general profess to have any jurisdiction whatever, except 



487 

so far as is necessary to protect the civil rights of the members belonging 
thereto, and of others who may have an interest in such rights, and to pre- 
serve the public peace. All questions relating to the faith and practice of 
the churches, and their members, belong to the church judicatories them- 
selves, and civil courts will interfere with churches, or associations, only 
when rights of property are involved. But even then they will not revise 
the decisions of such churches in ecclesiastical matters, merely to assert 
and maintain their jurisdiction. It has always been a well-defined rule 
of the courts that causes spiritual, must be judged by the church judica- 
tories, and causes temporal, by temporal judges. Civil judges have no 
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and cannot revise ordinary acts of church disci- 
pline. The church, as to its doctrines, government and worship, is to be 
governed by its peculiar rules, and courts will not interfere with those rules, 
unless it is necessary to do so to protect some civil right. Whatever is 
done in a church of our Lord Jesus Christ should only work by love, and 
inscribe the laws of liberty and light on the heart ; and the civil government 
has no just or lawful power over the conscience, or faith, or form of worship, 
or church creeds, or discipline, as long as they neither demoralize society or 
disturb its peace or security. It is most important in legislation to avoid 
intermeddling with the peculiar province of divinity. The divine law is the 
province of the theologian, ethics of the moral philosopher. Neither uses 
the compulsion which it is the province of the legislator to employ. On the 
other hand, if jurisprudence be viewed as only one branch of the social 
science, whose object it is to ascertain the great natural law of the progress 
and development of society, and according to Avhat laws men may live up to 
their obligations in happiness, then Baptist church jurisprudence may be 
held to include the entire domain of the rights and duties which come within 
the province of positive law, ethics and theology. The true objects of the 
science of Baptist church jurisprudence are the knowledge of the legal rela- 
tions which ought to be established by courts of justice Avhenever they are 
called upon to exercise their rightful jurisdiction in church quarrels, and 
the ascertainment of the best means to enforce such jurisdiction. Men can 
do nothing together in a church capacity that they cannot do by themselves 
in reference to the temporalities of their organization. Hence the same gen- 
eral rules of law that governs the one governs the other. 

While the secular arm of the government, including especially courts of 
justice, can take no cognizance of the religious afiairs of the churches, yet it 
cannot be doubted but that religion and jurisprudence have their common 
foundation in the order and appointment of God ; for it is he who is our 
Judge, our Law-giver and our King. Thus, it is he who, in the spiritual 
order of religion, establishes the ministry of ecclesiastical powers. In like 
manner he makes kings to reign, and gives to them all the power and 
authority which they have. From whence it follows that religion and juris- 
prudence, having only the same common principle of the divine order, they 
ought to harmonize and agree together and to support one another mutually, 
and in such a manner as that private persons may be able to pay a punctual 



488 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

and faithful obedience botli to the one and the other. It is certain that 
true religion and civil jurisprudence are always united together, and those 
who are employed in the ministry, both of the one and the other, ought to 
exercise it according to the spirit and rules which reconcile them together. 
It is the province of religion to bring men back to God, and by the light of 
the truths which it teaches them, to draw them out of the by-paths of self- 
love, and to prevent those disorders in church government which sometimes 
rend them in twain. But because all men have not this true spirit of re- 
ligion, and that many otherwise pious men carry themselves so as to disturb 
the external order of the churches, the spirit of civil jurisprudence is to 
maintain the public tranquillity and to settle the rights of property among 
all churches, and to keep them in order in this regard, whether they have 
the inward disposition to it or not, by employing for that end even force, 
according as there is occasion ; and it is for these two different uses of 
religion and civil jurisprudence that God has established these powers whose 
authority he has proportioned to these ends. The end of religion is only to 
redeem man from his sins and to form good dispositions in his heart, and 
God gives to the powers, which exercise the ministry of it, a spiritual 
authority to guard the churches from heresy and corruption, and to insin- 
uate the love of justice without the use of any temporal force upon the out- 
ward part of man, for the great apostle says. Not for that we have dominwn 
over your faith y hut are helpers of your joy : for hy faith ye are saved. But 
the administration of the temporal powers of courts of justice, which tends 
only to regulate the external order of the churches, is exercised by the force 
that is necessary for the restraining of those who depart from the faith, and 
not being lovers of justice, commit such excesses as disturb the order cf the 
churches. Thus the spiritual powers of the churches instruct, exhort, loose 
and bind the inward part of man, or his conscience, and exercise the other 
functions that are proper to the exercise of this authority. The courts of 
justice command and forbid what relates to the outward man ; maintain 
every one in his rights proportioned to what justice and the public peace 
requires. Thus, in every Baptist church, they whose duty it is to rule the 
church have no other way of preserving their rights, and no other way for 
the punishment of those who depart from the gospel faith, but by inflictifig 
such civil penalties as may be proper to reclaim their property rights and 
to bring the disorderly back to the duties which they have violated. 

But these differences between the spirit of religion and the spirit of secu- 
lar jurisprudence have nothing in them that may be a hindrance to their 
union ; for the same powers, spiritual and temporal, are united in their 
common end of maintaining order in the churches, and they mutually assist 
one another for that purpose. For it is a common law of religion, and a duty 
incumbent on those who exercise it, to recommend and to enjoin upon every 
one obedience to the temporal powers, not only out of fear of their authority, 
but as an essential duty, and out of a principle of conscience, and love of 
order. Let every soul he subject unto the higher powers. For there is no 
power hut of God : the powers that be are ordained of God, Whosoever, there- 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 489 

/ore, resisteih the power, resideth the ordinance of God. For rulers are not a 
terror to good works, hat to the evil. And it is likewise a law of temporal 
policy, and a duty of those who are employed to enforce it, to maintain the 
exercise of religion and to employ even temporal authority and force against 
those who disturb the order of it. Thus these two great principles agree 
together, and mutually support one another, even when the church seems to 
demand something that is contrary to the spirit of religion ; as when a man 
being sworn perjures himself by calhng upon God to help him to speak the 
truth, and then speaks falsely ; or where a man disturbs the peace of those 
assembled to worship courts will inflict penalties upon him for so doing. 
Likewise when one part of a church violates their covenant obligations by 
prostituting and perverting church property to a use not intended by the 
original founders of the church, courts will enjoin them from so doing or 
will oust them entirely and give those entire control of the property who 
have kept the faith pure and undetiled. It is by these secular laws that the 
rights of everything which man can possess are regulated, even the property 
of the churches is preserved tu it only by the authority of these laws ; be- 
cause it is to secular governments that God has given the control in tempo- 
ral things, and it alone has the right of joining force to authority, for pre- 
venting acts of injustice and for restraining usurpers who would divert 
church property from the purpose for which it was intended. And we may 
judge of the certainty of these principles by the impression which such 
truths ought to make upon our minds, which God reveals to us by the 
religion which we profess, and makes us to apprehend by our reason. From 
which it follows that the engagements and covenants of every church mem- 
ber are to him, as it were, his proper law^s which courts of justice will take 
notice of and enforce accordingly in so far as they bear upon the property 
rights of church members. That each j^articular member being linked to 
this body of the church of which he is a member, he ought not to undertake 
anything that may disturb the order of it. And this implies the obligation 
of submission, and obedience to the powers which God has established for 
maintaining this order. It remains then to inquire into the details of these 
principles as applied to controversies over the property and other temporali- 
ties of a divided churcli ; that we may discover thereby the foundations of 
many of the maxims that are essential to the knowledge and right use of 
these civil laws as they relate to church affairs. 

Generally speaking the only churches recognized in law are those which 
are incorporated and thereby become competent to sue and be sued by 
special charters, or under general laws of a State. It has, however, been 
held by the courts of many of the States that when there is no local statute 
contravening, church property may be held by trustees, or, as in Baptist 
churches generally in the South, by the deacons of a church for the use of 
the congregation, and they may at common law, sue and be sued, for and in 
'the name of the whole church. AU churches of all denominations have 
long since recognized the right of courts of justice to interfere in the eccle- 
siastical afikirs in all cases where the property rights or other temporal 



490 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; 

f affairs of the churches are involved. Peace and good order would not be 
guaranteed and upheld if this rightful jurisdiction were not recognized. 
There is no doubt about the right of unincorporated churches to sue in a 
court of justice on a contract made with them in their associated capacity, 
and for the legitimate purposes of their association, even though there be no 
persons named in the contract as trustees or committee-men on behalf of the 
church. Such associations have always been recognized as having an asso- 
ciate and quasi corporate existence in law, with power to hold property and 
build appropriate houses of worship, and of course with power to acquire 
rights by contracts and to vindicate them in the courts. And if the com- 
mon law-forms are insufficient for such cases, there is readily admitted the 
infusion into our law of the plain equity principles that allows a committee 
of voluntary associates to sue, and be sued as representatives of the whole. 
In most of the States suitable statutes provide that a religious association by 
voluntarily associating themselves together and performing other acts shall 
become a body corporate, and the society by performing such acts obtains a 
corporate existence, and may sue and be sued in that capacity. 

All purchases, gifts or devises of property for pious uses are trusts in con- 
templation of law, and w^hen created for religious worship, and it cannot be 
discovered from the deed or will creating the trust, what was the nature of 
the religious worship, or doctrine intended to be taught under it, it must be 
implied from the customs and usages of the congregation worshipping there. 
If it appears to have been the founder's intention, though not expressed, 
that a particular doctrine should be taught, it is not in the power of the 
trustees, or of the church, to alter the designed objects of the institution. 
The rule is that when a church becomes divided among themselves, as to the 
intention of the donor, the nature of the original teaching and preacliing of 
the congregation worshipping there must be looked to as the guide for the 
decision of the court, and to refer to any other criterion, as to the sense of 
the existing majority, would be to make a new church institution, which is 
altogether beyond the reach, and inconsistent with the duties of a court 
of justice. In all such cases it becomes necessary for the court to inquire 
what was the religion of the church before the controversy arose which di- 
vided them, and not to animadvert upon it, but to ascertain whether there 
has been such a change. This general principle of the common law applies 
to cases of this kind as well as to aU others, it being one of the rules of the 
universal order of society, that no law is made to serve only for one person, 
or for one case, but they provide in general for what may happen, and their 
dispositions respect all persons, and all cases, to which they extend. Hence 
the general doctrine of trusts, as practiced in courts of justice, is applicable 
to cases of this sort, and where property has been purchased by or given to 
a Baptist church, the meaning is that the same shall be applied to the teach- 
ing of the doctrines of the Baptists in their connection with that denom- 
ination, exclusive of all others ; and, of course, that the violation of this 
trust, in matters of doctrine or church government, entitles those who adhere 
to these principles to the relief which they claim in equity. Customarily, 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 491 

there are two ways of acquiring title to church property — by purchase and 
by gift, the title to which is generally perfected by deed, and, as in all other 
conveyances, any conditions may be expressed in it the parties may desire, 
and such conditions establish a trust and that trust must be carried out 
according to the intent of him who makes the deed ; but where there are no 
such conditions, and the property has been sold or given to any Baptists 
worshipping at a certain place, or to any other sect, indicating to what de- 
nomination the church belonged, by the use of the name which should de- 
scribe the fundamental doctrines, practices and pecularities of such denomi- 
nation, in the absence of a reversionary clause, the property would be taken 
to be held in trust for that particular church or denomination. Usually in 
Baptist churches deeds of conveyance are made to their deacons or other 
trustees, and their successors in ofBce, to be held by them in trust for them- 
selves and the churcli, and this trust is established, and the use, custody and 
control of the property is placed under the direction of the church, with 
special reference to the belief and the doctrine of the church as indicated by 
its name. 

For a long time in this country courts were slow to assume jurisdiction 
in matters ecclesiastical, the judges fearing that they might thereby invade 
the realm of religion, and even now it is held that the exercise of jurisdic- 
tion in cases of this kind is not without its difficulties. But more recently 
numerous cases have arisen in this country, w^hich clearly settle the ques- 
tion in favor of such jurisdiction. That which gradually led to this juris- 
diction was the numerous discussions in cases of religious charities, and what 
doctrine was fundamental in religion, and as to whether the private religious 
opinions of the founders of a charity were competent to be proved in evi- 
dence in order to aid in giving construction to the words of a will or deed 
by which a charity or trust is created. So it is now a well-settled principle 
of the common law, and of equity, that when property is conveyed to a 
certain church to promote the teaching of the doctrine of that church, and 
the property is attempted to be diverted to the support of different doctrines, 
it is the duty of a court of equity, upon application to it, to interpose for 
the purpose of carrying the trust into execution, according to the intention 
of the donors or purchasers ; and that it is no reason why the court should 
not thus interfere to enforce the trust, that the trustees elected by the church 
are in favor of the diversion of the trust from its original purpose ; but 
that the court would, in such cases, interfere upon complaint of the 
minority, large or small, against the majority. That in ascertaining the 
purposes for which property conveyed to the church was intended to be 
devoted, the language of the conveyance, if clear and unequivocal, is con- 
clusive. If the language is vague and indefinite, extrinsic evidence, such 
as the tenets held by the donor, or the faith then actually taught by the 
church, and the circumstances under which the gift was made, and the de- 
nominational name of the church to which the donation is made, and the 
doctrine actually taught therein at the time of the gift or purchase, may be 
resorted to in order to limit and define the trust in respect to the doctrine 



492 A TREATISE VFOl^ BAPTIST CHTJECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

usually considered fundamental, such as those in dispute between Baptists 
and others, but not as to lesser shades or points of doctrine not deemed fun- 
damental ; for it is not every change of principle or the practice of every 
error in church government that will operate as a destruction of a church, 
so as to forfeit its church state or to extinguish the light of its candlestick, 
and authorize the minority to sue for church property. Courts of justice 
must look to these questions as statesmen and jurists, and not as theologians, 
and a line must be established between the two. Theologians think they 
have become so wise as to fix the limits for the growth, the faith and prac- 
tice of the churches, but courts can fix none until the law can decide, with 
the help of theologians, what church is absolutely perfect. Not even can 
Baptists go into court and insist that they alone, of all others, are right, for 
courts have no standard of religion of their own, but must take their relig- 
ious views from the contestants in each particular case, and in so doing will 
not allow themselves to become sticklers over small things. All history 
reveals the church to us as an institution that is continually being educated 
and developed, and it changes with the changes it produces, and this right 
to develop in matters not fundamental is part of its freedom. 

An individual or an association of individuals, as a local church, may 
dedicate property, by way of a trust or charity, for the purpose of sustain- 
ing, supporting and propagating definite religious doctrines or principles, 
provided that in doing so they violate no law of morality and give to the 
instrument by which their purpose is evidenced the formalities which the 
law requires. And it would seem also to be the obvious duty of the court, 
in a case properly made, to see that the property so dedicated is not diverted 
from the trust which is thus attached to its use. So long as there are per- 
sons qualified within the meaning of the original dedication, and who are 
also willing to teach the doctrines or principles prescribed in the act of dedi- 
cation, and so long as there is any one so interested in the execution of the 
trust as to have a standing in court, it must be that they can prevent the 
diversion of the property or fund to other and different uses. This is the 
general doctrine of courts of equity as to charities, and it seems equally ap- 
plicable to ecclesiastical matters. In such cases if the trust is confided to a 
religious congregation of Baptists holding to the independent form of church 
government, it is not in the power of the majority of that kind of a church, 
however preponderant, by reason of a change of views on religious subjects, 
to carry the property so confided to them to the support of new and con- 
flicting doctrines. A pious man, or set of men, building a house and dedi- 
cating a house of worship to the sole and exclusive use of those who believe 
in the doctrine of the Baptist church, and placing it under the control of a 
congregation which at the time of dedication holds the same belief, has a 
right to expect that the law as administered by the secular courts will pre- 
vent that property from being used as a means of support and dissemination 
of the Armenian doctrine and as a place of Armenial worship. Nor is the 
principle varied when the church to which the trust is confided is of the 
episcopal or any other form of church government. The protection which 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 498 

the law throws around the trust is the same. And though the task may be 
a delicate one and a difficult one for a secular court, it vf ill nevertheless be 
its duty in such cases when the doctrine to be taught or the form of worship 
to be used is definitely and clearly laid down, to inquire whether the party 
accused of violating the trust is holding or teaching a different doctrine, or 
using a form of worship which is so far variant and heretical as to defeat the 
declared objects of the trust. The religious belief of the parties is irrelevant 
to the matters in dispute, except so far as the court is called upon to execute 
the trust. In such cases, where there is a schism which leads to a separa- 
tion into distinct and conflicting bodies, where there is no departure from the 
faith, the rights of such bodies to the use of the property must be determined 
by the ordinary principles which govern voluntary associations. If the 
principle of government in such cases is that the majority rules, as in Bap- 
tist church government, then the numerical majority of members must con- 
trol the right to the use of the property. This is obviously the case even 
where the deacons or other trustees hold possession of the property. Title 
is vested in them for the use of those persons who, by the customs and usages 
of the church, are entitled to that use. They have no personal ownership or 
right beyond this, and are subject in their official relations to the property, 
to the control of the church itself. 

A schism in a general sense means a division, or a separation. It occurs 
where there is either a departure from faith or a division on account of a 
mere difference of sentiment not involving heresy, or a departure from the 
faith. Appropriately speaking, a division in a church is a separation on 
account of a diversity of opinions, and is a breach of unity among people of 
the same faith and order. It is a separation of the church into two parts 
without any change of faith or ulterior relations. The courts of the country 
do not recognize the rights of a minority to discard the faith of the church, 
its doctrines and organization, and to affiliate with another church, or to 
organize one of their own, and still be entitled to share equally with their 
former brethren in the use of their church property, especially if they have 
voluntarily left the church for cause other than heresy on the part of the 
majority, or have been excommunicated for immorality, or contempt of 
church authority, which always terminates the property rights of such 
excluded members. It is the right of a majority in a Baptist church to 
control in all ecclesiastical affairs, and not less in the management of the 
temporalities of the church than in any other. This is a cardinal principle 
in our ecclesiastical polity. When men differ in opinion, the will of the 
majority must prevail, provided there is no departure from faith. The rule 
is safe and equitable. Sometimes, though not often, the application of the 
rule results in individual hardships. Sometimes, too, though very rarely, it 
is necessary to protect the rights of a minority against the arbitrary acts of 
the majority that they should contend earnestly for their rights in the 
church. But generally,' where individuals unite their interests to accomplish 
a common end they should expect, and be willing, that a majority of the 
church should govern in all matters of common concern. They may be 



494 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

supposed to enter the church with the knowledge that they are to be 
governed by this principle. On the other hand, those who prevail in such 
unhappy controversies should not forget that the minority, as well as them- 
selves, have their rights. These rights should be tenderly regarded, and the 
more so because they are the rights of the minority. The minority, however, 
in choosing to separate themselves into a distinct body, and refusing to 
recognize the majority in the government of the body, can claim no rights in 
the property from the fact that they had once been members of the church. 
This ruling admits of no inquiry into the existing opinions of the contending 
parties when no heresy or departure from the faith is charged ; for if such 
was permitted, a very small minority, without any officers of the church 
among them, might be found to be in the right in some little controversy in 
the church over which they had become divided. There being no such trust 
imposed upon the property when purchased or given, the court will not 
imply one for the purpose of expelling from its use those who, by regular 
succession and order, constitute the church, because they may have seen 
proper to differ from the minority upon some matter of church policy not 
sounding in heresy or religious truth. In this class of cases the rule of 
action which governs the civil courts, founded in a broad and sound view of 
the jurisdiction of the civil courts in these matters, and supported by a pre- 
ponderating weight of judicial authority, is, that, whenever any question of 
mere discipline or rule has been decided by a Baptist church, the legal 
tribunals must accept such decision as final, and as binding on them in their 
application to the case before them. 

In this free land of religious liberty the full and free right to entertain 
any religious belief, to practice any religious principle, and to teach any 
religious doctrine which does not violate the laws of morality and the rights 
of property, and does not infringe personal rights, is conceded to all. The 
law knows no heresy, has no articles of faith, is committed to the support of 
no dogma, nor the establishment of any sect. The right to organize volun- 
tary independent churches, to assist in the expression and dissemination of 
any religious doctrine, and to create tribunals for the decision of controverted 
questions of faith and practice, as in the episcopal and presbyterian forms of 
church government, and for the ecclesiastical government of all the indivi- 
dual ministers and members of such churches and officers within the whole 
denomination, is unquestioned. All who unite themselves to such bodies do 
so with an implied consent to its government, and are bound to submit to 
it. But it would be a vain conceit, and would lead to the total subversion 
of such religious bodies, if any one aggrieved by one of their decisions could 
appeal to the secular courts and have them revised. It is of the essence of 
these religious unions, and of their right to establish tribunals for the 
decision of questions arising among themselves, that those decisions should 
be binding in all cases of ecclesiastical cognizance, subject only to such 
appeals as the organism itself provides for ; which happily for Baptist church 
government there is no appeal from the decision of the church itself, and 
its decisions are final. Nor do we see that justice would likely be the better 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 495 

promoted by submitting those decisions to review and revision in the ordi- 
nary judicial tribunals of the land. The Baptist denomination has a body 
of ecclesiastical laws, customs and usages founded upon the Bible itself, 
which constitutes a system of both faith and practice. It is not to be sup- 
posed that the judges of the civil courts can be as competent in the eccle- 
siastical law and religious faith as the ablest men in the churches are in 
reference to their own. It would be, therefore, an appeal from the more 
learned tribunal in the law which should decide the case, to one which is less 
so. Courts of justice having no ecclesiastical jurisdiction, cannot revise, or 
question ordinary acts of church discipline. Their only judicial power in 
ecclesiastical matters arises from the conflicting claims of the parties to the 
church property aud the use of it. They cannot decide who ought to be 
members of the church, nor whether excommunicated members have been 
justly or unjustly, regularly or irregularly, cut off from the body of the 
church. Profane judges cannot enter the holy precincts of the church for 
the forbidden purpose of vindicating the alleged wrongs of excommunicated 
members ; when they became members, they did so upon the condition of con- 
tinuing or not as they or their churches might determine, and they thereby 
submit to the ecclesiastical power of the church, and cannot afterward 
invoke the supervisory power of the civil tribunals. Any other than these 
ecclesiastical courts must be incompetent judges of matters of faith, discipline 
and doctrine ; and civil courts, if they should be so unwise as to attempt to 
supervise their judgments which come within their jurisdiction, would only 
involve themselves in a sea of uncertainty and doubt, which would do any- 
thing but improve either the tranquillity, religion or good morals of the 
churches. Hence the civil tribunal tries the civil right, and no more ; tak- 
ing the ecclesiastical decisions out of which the civil right arises as it finds 
them. 

Courts of equity have gone so far, as, upon application of a minority of 
the church, to restrain the majority from applying the temporalities of the 
church to the support of a person as minister who had been deposed from the 
ministry by the proper ecclesiastical tribunal, and had not been restored. It 
has also been held that the support of particular doctrines or systems of 
worship, or government, or a connection with some particular church judica- 
tory, may be made a condition in a grant or deed to a church ; but if no 
such condition be expressed, none will be implied, except as to fundamental 
points; but that the denominational name may indicate the nature of the 
trust, so far as it respects doctrines deemed cardinal, and if a denominational 
enterprise becomes incorporated, it may be considered as designed and con- 
stituted for the purpose of advancing the vital doctrines taught by that 
denomination, and the trustees, or those in charge, may be enjoined from 
applying the property, or the use of it, to the promotion of the tenets clearly 
opposed and adverse to the fundamental principles of the faith professed by 
the church at the time the trust was created. If a Baptist church in the 
course of time should become equally divided, and one half of its members 
should deny the faith and secede from the church and denomination, and 



49G A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

each half should separately undertake to control the use of the house accord- 
iug to its own religious views, and the views of the two divisions were 
antagonistic, and a court were called upon to enforce the trust ; can there be 
any doubt that equity would require that the control of the house should be 
given to the division which adhered to the original faith ? Would not that 
be carrying out the wishes and intentions of the original founders of the 
trust ? It certainly would be the duty of a court of equity to look beyond 
the mere form of the thing to its material substance, and to say that the 
portion of the church who adhered to the faith and polity of the denomina- 
tion that founded the church, were entitled to the control and use of the 
house, rather than that portion who, still being members of the church in 
name only, or who had been excluded therefrom, and in form had renounced 
the faith of the denomination whose fundamental doctrine had given name 
to the church. They cannot abandon the tenets and doctrine of the church 
by the belief and practice of heresies and retain the right to the property of 
a divided membership, even if but a single member adheres to the original 
faith of the church. This rule of law is founded on reason and justice. 
Church property is rarely paid for by those who there worship, and those who 
contribute to its purchase, or who erect it are presumed to do so with 
reference to the Baptist form of worship, and to promote the promulgation 
of its particular doctrine, and to pervert its property to another use and 
purpose is an injustice of the same character as the application of other trust 
property to purposes other than those designed by the donors. Hence it is, 
that those who adhere to the original faith, for the preaching of which a 
church has been erected, constitutes the church, and are the sole beneficiaries 
designed by the original donors and founders, and those who depart from 
and abandon those doctrines cease, in the eye of the law, to be the church, 
although from a judicial standpoint they may be a church, and especially do 
they forfeit all claim to the name of a Baptist church, and may be enjoined 
from any interference therewith. 

There is a class of cases, however, where it has been held, that in case of 
a division of what is known as congregational churches, where no heresy is 
charged but both parties still adhere to the tenets, doctrines and discipline 
of the society, the property has been divided between them, in proportion to 
the members on both sides, at the time of the separation. This ruling must 
be based upon some statute law of the states wherein these decisions have 
been rendered, or else in pursuance of some custom among themselves. It 
certainly could not be applied to Baptist church government, as it would be 
destructive of the very foundation upon which church authority rests — that 
is, purity of the faith, and rule by the majority. A minority of a church 
may be wrongfully driven away, or expelled for some reason other than 
heresy, and they go hence without any rights in and to the property they 
leave behind them in the divided church. Such cases could not be regarded 
as authority if applied to our democratic system, and really in no other form 
of church government except in States that have undertaken to regulate 
those things by statute, or in congregational churches where not only the 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 497 

members thereof participate in the government, but likewise those who have 
no definite religious views, but nevertheless are of the congregation, and 
where religious societies have organized and incorporated themselves under 
such laws. Neither can we depend upon, and be guided by another line of 
decisions which have been made by the English courts under well-defined 
statutory laws governing the English Establishment. We can very well 
understand how the Lord Chancellor of England who is, in his office, in a 
large sense, the head and the representative of the Established Church, who 
controls very largely the church patronage, and whose judicial decisions 
under the canon laws and statutes of that country may be, and not unfre- 
quently is, invoked in cases of heresy and ecclesiastical contumacy, should 
feel, even in dealing with a dissenting church, but little delicacy in grappling 
with the most obstruse problems of theological controversies, or in construing 
those ecclesiastical enactments which those churches have adopted as their 
rules of government, or inquiring into their customs and usages. The dis- 
senting church in England is not a free church in the sente in which we use 
the term in this country ; and it was much less free in the olden times than 
now. Laws then existed upon the statute books hampering the free exercise 
of religious belief and w^orship in many most oppressive forms. Any rulings 
under cases arising in those times and under systems of that nature would be 
misleading. Likewise there is a shade of difference between our free system 
and where the religious bodies holding church property is but a subordinate 
member of some overgrown general church organization, in which there are 
superior ecclesiastical tribunals, with a general and ultimate power of con- 
trol, more or less complete, in some supreme judicatory, over the whole 
membership of that general organization. Ours being a system where the 
property is held by a church wdiich, by the nature of its organization, is 
strictly independent of other ecclesiastical associations, and so far as church 
government is concerned owes no fealty or obligation to any higher author- 
ity, the judicial decisions, as applied to it, are essentially different. 

The question naturally arises as to whether a church, as a whole, not so 
much as one excepted, should apostatize and depart from the faith held by 
Baptists ; in that event, would equity raise up a trustee, in an outside Bap- 
tist, not a member of the fallen and apostate church, upon application, to 
hold the property for the use and benefit of the denomination to which the 
church originally belonged ? I do not know that this identical question has 
ever come before the courts in this shape for settlement ; but after a careful 
study of the question of charitable trusts and uses as a lawyer, I do not hesi- 
tate to lay this down as a sound principle of law. That when property, real 
or personal, is vested in a Baptist church, for the teaching and preaching of 
those doctrines for which that church is noted and known to have alwa^^s 
taught, whether the church is incorporated or not, it is a charitable and 
pious use, whether the donors be one or many. The church is a trustee for 
the whole denomination to administer the trust, and can no more divert the 
property from the use to w^hich it was originally dedicated than any other 
trustees can. If the church as a whole should undertake to divert the prop- 
82 



498 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

erty, and there should be no one faithful enough to contend for it in the 
church, equity will raise some other trustee to administer it ; or if a minor- 
ity of the church, whether one or many, contend for the right, equity will 
constitute them trustees to apply the property according to the intention of 
the original donors. When the founders of a charity, or of a church, have 
clearly expressed their intention that the property shall be put to a certain 
use, or that a particular set of doctrines shall be taught, or a particular form 
of worship and government maintained, it is not in the power of the indi- 
viduals having the management of the church, or society, to niter the pur- 
pose for which it was founded, and cannot break off from that connection 
and government. If they do, equity will lend a listening ear to any bene- 
ficiary who will, in the proper way, contend for the property, in order that 
the trust may be faithfully carried out. If a Baptist gives his substance to 
found a Baptii^t church for the purpose of teaching the doctrine of the Bible 
as understood and promulgated by the Baptist denomination, and those who 
might afterwards have immediate control of the property should attempt to 
divert it fi'om such a use, I take it any Baptist, although not a member of 
that church, might sue for the property, and thus save it to the denomina- 
tion for whose use it was originally intended. Where a church under such 
circumstances has destroyed itself by ecclesiastical apostasy and heresy, and 
the whole body has denied the faith, so that there is no faithful representa- 
tive left to contend for the property and the faith, for the teaching of which 
it was donated, a court of equity will rescue it from such a church and pre- 
vent it from being appropriated by those, who have ignored the faith by 
voluntarily withdrawing from the denomination, its doctrine, its faith and 
practice. It would not change the principle of law to say that those who 
thus sought to divert the property had contributed a part of the funds to 
erect the house and that, therofore, they were entitled to the use of it, or a 
'pro rata division of it ; for a court of equity would not divide such a trust,nor 
suffer it to be prostituted to any use other than that for which it was intended. 
They could claim no interest in it, having themselves been instrumental in 
founding the trust, and if there were no such conditions imposed upon the 
property when purchased a court would not imply such a trust for the pur- 
pose of depriving those of its use, who by regular succession, order and gov- 
ernment constitute orthodox Baptists willing to hold and use it for Bap- 
tist purposes. 

To constitute a man a Baptist, and a member of a Baptist church, two 
points at least are essential, a profession of its faith, and subniission to its 
government. There must necessarily be government in every church, as 
well for the due regulation of its temporal affairs, as for the preserva- 
tion of the integrity of its faith. Hence not only a departure from the 
faith by a church will operate as a forfeiture of church property, but like- 
wise a departure from church government. Indeed in many societies, and 
especially in all Baptist churches, their form of church government is ns 
important and fundamental as the doctrine they teach and preach. It is 
based upon the exact Scriptural model. This government by the ruling 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 499 

majority, churcli sovereignty, independence and equality is part of the reli- 
gion, as well as the order and polity of the churches. It is not to be looked 
upon as a matter of human invention and contrivance. Being instituted by 
the apostles, it is not assumed that man has the power or choice to change 
its religion or polity, and to cast about in his own mind as to how, or on 
what pattern the church shall be constituted. This government was at first 
set up by inspired men, and the courts of the country undertake to say, and 
do say, that it cannot be changed or corrupted, without branding those who 
do so with infidelity and heresy, viewing these things from a denominational 
standpoint. When secular men institute profone governments, they satisfy 
themselves as to which form combines the greatest amount of good with the 
least evil, and then go about persuading others that it is the best. But in 
Baptist church government those who enter it take it as they find it 
reflected in the Bible, and established by the apostles. With us it is not a 
matter of choice, and our busine-s is not to develop it into something else, 
but to acquaint ourselves with its natural properties, and to assimilate our- 
selves to its form. They, therefore, cannot choose or change its doctrines or 
government. The mere details of its rules of action, its internal workings, 
its minor customs, are all matters of choice, but the essence of the whole, its 
fundamental doctrines, the lodgment of its sovereignty, are matters which 
cannot be abrogated, and when property rights are involved, and the aid of 
courts are invoked, they will so decide. These courts hold that it is a part 
of the religious liberty guaranteed to every man and body of men by the 
constitution and laws of the land to separate from their former church, if 
they become dissatisfied with its faith or polity, and build for themselves 
another church, and to organize on other principles ; but it is no part of that 
liberty to appropriate to themselves, in their new capacity, property which 
had been solemnly dedicated and consecrated to other uses. All dissenting 
members, in a legal point of view, are voluntary members of the church to 
which they belong. The position was not forced upon them, they sought it. 
They accepted it with all its burdens and consequences. They are supposed 
to have known its doctrine, and solemnly pledged themselves to teach and 
uphold it, and to be faithful to its every interest, and are supposed to be 
acquainted with all its rules and laws and customs subsisting, or to be made 
by competent authority, and can at pleasure, and with impunity, abandon 
it. But all such should go hence with a full knowledge that they leave 
behind them no rights, either in the church, or in its property, which can be 
maintained in the courts of the country. 

Thus it will be seen that a court of equity is the only judicatory, outside of 
a Baptist church, to which parties in a divided church can appeal, and the 
only tribunal that can sit in judgment, and review the decision of a Baptist 
church, but does so in no religious sense, but in a legal capacity, for it has no 
religious vicvs in itself, by which to measure these rights. By this inter- 
meddling, on the part of the judicial arm of the government, there is no 
admixture of religion and the profane law, neither by the use of these laws 
is it attempted to enforce Christianity. True religion asks no aid from the 



500 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

sword of civil authority. It began without the sword, and as our Saviour 
told Peter, those who take the sword must perish by the sword. As a church 
has no power to arm an officer with authority to administer a property right, 
or trust, the customary law of the churches allows a resort to profane courts 
for that purpose, and those who thus appeal, do nothing more than preserve 
themselves as Baptists, and reclaim that which is their own. Then we see 
that a schism or division in a church by discord is only an ecclesiastical 
disease, but heresy is the death of a church. It is a good and proper thing 
to use pacific means, advices, remonstrances, and admonitions to cure these 
maladies, but those who have no regard for the faith of the church, or for 
justice, and will not hearken to counsel, must be constrained and enjoined by 
the strong arm of the law, where temporalities are concerned. The principles 
laid down in this chapter but confirms what was said heretofore, that it is 
folly for an upright and a faithful minority to deal otherwise with an un- 
faithful majority, who will not be guided by reason, and have receded from 
the faith of the church. The law, neither does true Baptist church govern- 
ment, hold that to be a church, which rejects the fundamental and essential 
doctrines of the church, nor does it account that a church of Christ which 
overthrows the laws and doctrine by which it is made a church. The 
history of Baptist church government is not without examples of this kind. 
The question ought to be whether these jarring discords which give rise to 
these trials of the rights to property, shall fall upon one church, or upon the 
whole denomination, by allowing the infectious disease to spread among the 
whole body. A covenant broken on one side is broken on the other. When 
a controversy happens between the two divisions of a disrupted church, 
neither of them can determine the cause, but it must be referred to a court 
of justice, which, for the purpose of determining property rights, is superior 
to them both ; not because it is not competent for a part of a divided church 
to be a judge in their own case, but because both have in their distracted 
condition assumed equal right to judge, and neither will consent to any sub- 
jection to the other. No minority that has preserved itself by a faithful 
adherence to the doctrines of the church can persuade itself that it is their 
duty to submit to the control of those who set themselves to overthrow the 
church and its government, and can only judge whether that control can be 
employed to their welfare, or turned to their ruin ; in other words they must 
be the judges of the manner in which the ruling majority fulfills its trusts ; 
and there is but one way to do it and that is by the standard of their own 
opinions. When a church is thus rent in twain by these internal troubles, 
so that they have no regard for the laws of neither God nor man, and those 
laws are held in contempt by them, the only power capable of subjugating 
them is more of the spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

The original, as well as the permanent, function of church government, is 
the exercise of such control over the relations of members to one another in 
a church as may bring those relations into accord with the requirements of the 
law of the gospel and protect majorities and minorities from aggressive inter- 
ruptions on the part of each other, and may, by the help of the best system 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 501 

of ethical rules, facilitate the government of the churches in the presumed 
interest of all their members. But if it becomes a custom in Baptist church 
polity for a minority, great or small, for trivial causes, to witiidraw from a 
church, and without taking the customary steps to pretend to erect them- 
selves into a church, or to declare themselves to be a church, why intelligent 
and orderly church government is at an end. It is admitted that in this 
respect Baptist church government is weak in the extreme, yet it subsists 
and must be 2:)erpetuated by the observance of well-defined rules by the de- 
nomination at large. Hence is it not only inexpedient for Baptists to trifle 
with the fixed and spontaneous practices of the churches, but it is impos- 
sible for them to do so long without committing often an act of ecclesiastical 
suicide. There are two choices, the choice between orderly government and 
chaotic confusion. Therefore the question among Baptists is not, nor can 
be, whether the alternative of confusion and disorder is to be selected, on. 
any failure of Baptist church government to do the work expected of it, but 
only what modification in the existing form of government is most urgently 
called for. 

It may be contended that any system of church government that will allow 
a resort to a profane court to pass upon questions of religious belief to settle 
property rights, rather than allow an appeal to some judicatory erected by 
the denomination, of which the church is a pait, is defective. Had we an 
example of one in the Scriptures, or any warrant for the erection of such a 
tribunal, gladly would we erect one and cheerfully follow it. Again, it may 
be said, that in all well-balanced governments, whether church or state, the 
supreme power ought to be divided, and each department be protected 
against the usurpations of the other by being armed with powers for defense 
as strong as others can wield for attack. Concede this to be so ; yet we see 
as many, and even more, adjudications of property rights in churches with 
hierarchijsal forms of governments as we see in our own free system. As to 
appeals from decisions in Baptist churches, he is a dull observer who does 
not learn that there is a quasi appeal from every important adjudication in 
a Baptist church to the denomination at large. This denominational public 
opinion is so powerM a thing that any error committed or any heresy prac- 
ticed will be corrected and uprooted when confronted at the bar of this 
mighty tribunal. To plant heretical seeds in Baptist soil and expect them 
to spring up and grow, would be like sowing bad seed in stony places, or 
like ^sop's earth, which would not nurse the plant of another soil, although 
ever so much fertilized, because the plant was not of its own production — 
not indigenous to the soil. Heresies will not grow in Baptist soil ; erratic 
hands may, in an evil hour, deposit the seed, it may even spring up, a feeble 
and perverted plant, but under the withering eye of a scrutinizing and ever- 
watchful denomination they soon die and are forgotten. As to our form of 
church government. Baptists find themselves much in the condition of the 
navigator— they may direct the vessel which bears them, but they can neither 
change its structure nor dry up the waters upon which it rides. Hence, 
whatever defects there may be found in the system, courts of justice will not 



502 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPHUDENCE ; 

undertake to remedy, neither can they be remedied by the skill of the eccle* 
siastical legislator, but we must find in ourselves, as a denomination, the 
strength necessary to bear the natural imperfections which others are so 
ready to see inherent in the system. Those churches which are the best 
ordered, and ruled according to the strictest principles of the laws of both 
God and man, can sustain many and great shocks. But the badly ordered 
are often destroyed by trifling disorders, and therefore need greater caution. 
In treating of Baptist church jurisprudence we ought, if possible, to discover 
some rules applicable to the churches in a state of discord as well as in a 
state of peace, for the object of rules is the betterment and happiness of the 
churches, and discords neither produce the happiness of those who are the 
occasion of them or of those who sufier from them. 

Though the laws of the land have discarded religious establishments, being 
contrary to the doctrines of religious liberty, it does not forbid judicial cogni- 
zance of those offenses against religion and morality, which have no refer- 
ence to any such establishment, but are punishable because they strike at 
the root of moral and legal obligations, and weaken the security of social 
ties. In fact the Constitution of the United States never meant to with- 
draw religion in general, and with it the best sanctions of moral and social 
obligations, from all consideration and notice of the law. In this sense, 
in deed and in truth, is Christianity a part of the common law of the land, 
as it is likewise the common law of the churches. In very many of the 
States a man who speaks contumelious, blasphemous and disgraceful words 
of Christ may be tried, convicted, fined and imprisoned. It has also been 
held that while individual consciences may not be constrained, yet men of 
every opinion and creed may be restrained from acts which interfere with 
Christian worship, or which tend to revile religion or bring it into contempt. 
"When any belief tends to acts which interfere with the rights of those who 
represent the religion of the country, their acts may be restrained by the 
courts or by legislation. Hence the laws of the land and Christianty are 
wedded sisters. They go hand in hand, and give energy and effect to one 
another. There is not a right that we enjoy which is not pervaded with the 
living principles of justice and truth, whose sure foundations are the Holy 
Scriptures. God rules the universe and has given the kingdoms of the 
world to his Son who occupies the Supreme Bench and judges everything. 
All laws, therefore, which are framed for the guidance of human society 
should be subordinated to the higher system of Heaven ; which in a wonder- 
ful wisdom and love has not only devised the redemption and restoration of 
humanity, but has revealed those eternal princi])les of morality that are 
endued with living power for the order and welfare of men. The peace 
and well-being of society are thereby promoted, and increased security of 
life and property is thereby afforded. 

Christianity is a part of the common law of the land, not to the extent that 
would authorize a compulsory conformity in faith and practice to the creed 
and formula of worship of any sect or denomination, or even in those matters 
of doctrine and worship common to all denominations styling themselves 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF IHE GOSPEL. 503 

Christians, but to the extent that entitles the Christian religion and its ordi- 
nances to respect and protection. The belief of no man can be restrained, 
and the proper expression of religious belief and the rights of property is 
guaranteed to all, but this right like any other right must be exercised with 
strict regard to the equal rights of others ; and when religious belief or 
unbelief leads to acts which interfere with the religious worship, or the lib- 
erty of conscience of those who represent the religion of the country, as 
established, not by law, but by the consent, custom and usage of a denomi- 
nation and existing before the organization of the government, even if they 
are not indictable at law. Compulsory worship of God in any form is pro- 
hibited, and every man's opinion on matters of religion, as in other matters, 
is beyond the reach of the law. No man can be compelled to perform any 
act, or omit any act as a duty to God ; but this liberty of conscience iu 
matters of faith and practice is entirely consistent with the protection that 
the law throws around the property rights of a divided church, as furnishing 
the best sanctions of moral and social obligations. The public peace and 
public welfare are greatly dependent upon the protection of the religion of 
the country and the preventing or punishing of offences against it, and acts 
wantonly committed subversive of it. Now it is plain, that that tribunal, 
though it be a secular one, which is able and has the power to decide the 
law in such cases, and also to carry its judgment into immediate execution, 
must ultimately acquire the supremacy over the church and assert its juris- 
diction. When, therefore, the question is asked. Why is the court the tribu- 
nal of dernier resort?— the obvious answer is, that its office, as such, 
is the natural and necessary consequence of the manner in which our 
government is constituted. The courts never arrogate to themselves the 
imposing authority of intermeddling in these church affairs. They act as 
they are acted upon, and yet it is the exercise of this more humble duty 
which has rendered them the undisputed arbiters in settling the disputed 
property rights of a divided church ; and it is fortunate when churches can 
avail themselves of these salutary helps and agencies, in order to strengthen 
the authority of cliurch government, and to maintain order and tranquillity 
in the denomination. 

Courts of justice, then, may well be considered as institutions in every 
respect suitable for the purpose of putting an end to disputes in a church 
over property rights. Without this instrumentality of judicial tribunals, 
which in Baptist church government, has to act in detail and not in gross, 
the denomination would be a prey to perpetual church quarrels over tem- 
poralities. Disputes in this respect in divided churches in a denomination, 
so large as that of the Baptists, are of frequent occurrence. The manifold 
relations which men have to each other in a thriving and progressive deno- 
mination multiply them greatly. These disputes are not alone confined to 
Baptists, and have a relation to the most valuable interest to the whole 
denomination ; to both doctrine and property. And especially in our sys- 
tem, to have devised for us a mode by which they may be quietly appeased, 
is one of the greatest adjuncts to Baptist church government. When 



604 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUKCH JUEISPEUDENCE ; 

heresies spread from church to church, the quarrels over property and prop- 
erty rights frequently assume a formidable shape, and become matters of the 
gravest public interest. In the Methodist and Presbyterian churches 
before, during, and just after the late war, especially, was this the case, 
when those churches divided upon questions of pohtical interest. The in- 
jured parties interested, first their relatives and friends, then the neighbor- 
hood, and finally whole denominations, were involved in the ferment. Hap- 
pily, the Baptists, having no ecclesiastical iron-bound bonds that bound them 
together as a denomination, were exempted from those turmoils. A tribu- 
nal, therefore, which goes to the bottom of the evil, and takes each case as 
it arises, separately and in detail, and which is so constructed as to inspire a 
very general confidence in its impartiality and integrity, necessarily occupies 
a very important place in the apparatus of Baptist church jurisprudence. 

The above legal principles are laid down, not for the purpose of encour- 
aging my brethren to go to law, one with another, over property rights, but 
rather to keep them from doing so, except in cases where there is hope of 
recovery. No one should claim the exercise of a right or the performance 
of a duty unless he has the law to support him, and has the power of the 
law to make his claim efiectual. It is inconsistent with the idea of a right 
that the enjoyment of its object should be merely precarious and at the will 
of another. If it is in the power of the person, against whose interest the 
benefit is sought, to permit or refuse the request, it is still precarious and 
not a claim of right in him, though it may be in the other. But if it is in the 
power of the claimant to compel the other to enforce the request, then the 
claim may be a claim of right. A man, to be able to call a right his, must 
be certain of it by some means, that is, legally certain ; in human afiairs he 
can only have that certainty by having in his hands the power to enforce i-t, 
which can only be acquired by making out a clear case which entitles him 
to have that power exercised in his behalf. The sum total, then, is that in 
all cases where there is no heresy involved, nor any departure from funda- 
mental principles, no recovery can be had ; otherwise the minojity must 
submit to the rule and government of the majority in mere matters of dis- 
cipline and practice. 

But should Baptists ever go to law with one another ? By no means ! It 
is the greatest scandal that can befall a Christian church. There is no ques- 
tion in church government upon which one of the apostles speaks so plainly 
and positively. Nothing is more opposite to the duties we owe to the cause 
of Christ nor more contrary to the law of brotherly love, which should be 
cultivated by all Baptists and churches alike, than this breach of the law of 
the gospel which brings absolute disgrace upon the denomination. Offences 
of this sort excite such asperity and rancor between brethren and churches 
that we should avoid giving anj room for the spread of such a pestilence 
and disease among our people. Here is work peculiarly for a judicious 
council, to be agreed upon between the contending factions to the division. 
It is for all purposes adequate — Scripturally adequate — to handle these deli- 
cate interests. Whenever we see a court of justice forced to handle these 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 505 

ecclesiastical questions, it ought at once to be understood and known, far and 
wide, that one side or the other — either plaintiff or defendant — has so little 
faith in the justness and justice of their cause that they are afraid to submit 
these matters to a council for a settlement; that they have departed so 
widely from the faith and practice of the denomination as that they are un- 
willing to have the light of the truth shed upon their conduct. And until 
one side or the other does so refuse overtures to settle matters in this way, 
ought the other to resort to the courts of the country for an adjudication of 
these matters. And I doubt very materially, as a lawyer, whether a court, 
upon the point being raised upon demurrer, would feel that it could take 
proper jurisdiction of a case of this kind until resort had been made to a 
Baptist council for amicable settlement, or, at least, that a willingness had 
been shown to resort to a council and the dominant faction had refused. 
The courts have decided that where a controversy has arisen in a divided 
church, over some matter, not sounding in heresy, but of a voluntary nature, 
and the case has been finally determined in the recognized church judicatories 
known to the denomination, they will not disturb their findings, but will 
leave the parties to abide their decision. Couucils being the only tribunals 
known to Baptist jurisprudence to try such cases, when the church, for any 
cause, is unwilling or unable to try the same, it is believed that the court 
would compel Baptists to first resort to a council before appealing to a secu- 
lar court for relief. At least, if either party has committed such a breach of 
all the laws of God and man as to be unwilling to have their own brethren 
to sit in judgment upon cases of this kind, then let the party whose cause is 
just take the case into the secular court, and let the strong arm of the law 
settle that which cannot otherwise be determined. If men were always 
equally just, equitable and spiritually minded, the laws of the gospel would 
doubtless be sufficient for the churches. But arrogance, the illusions of self- 
love, pride and the violence of the passions, too often render these sacred 
laws ineffectuah It is sometimes necessary to deviate from them, in order 
to prevent abuses, even in church government, and to accommodate our- 
selves to circumstances ; and since our obligation to the church has fre- 
quently so little influence upon us, a civil sanction becomes necessary to give 
the laws of the gospel their full efficacy. Thus the law of the gospel is 
converted into a civil law, and made to subserve the ends of justice. 

Then, to speak from the standpoint of the gospel. Baptists have no right 
to go to law with one another. The disputes that arise between them origi- 
nate either from contested rights, or from injuries received. It is true that 
every Baptist as well as every church ought to preserve the rights which 
belong to them ; and the care of their own safety forbids them to submit to 
injuries. But in fulfilling the duty which they owe to themselves they must 
not forget their duty to others, and especially must they follow the law of 
the gospel as the supreme law of the churches. If neither of the parties to 
the dispute think proper to abandon their rights, or pretensions, the con- 
tending parties, by the laws of the gospel, which forbid the going to law one 
with another, but recommends peace, concord and charity, are bound to try 



606 A THEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPRUDENCE ; 

the gentlest metliods of terminating their differences by the calling of a 
council before which to try these disputes. And should any be in doubt as 
to the lawfulness of this method and its scrip turaln ess I will here quote the 
law of the gospel, which wull be a fitting conclusion to these considerations : 
Dare any of you, haviiig a matter against another, go to law before the unjust 
and not before the saints f Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the 
world. ^ and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the 
smallest matters f Know ye not that we shall judge angels f how much mo-re 
things that pertain to this life f If then ye have judgments of things pertain- 
ing to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church. I 
speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you f no, 
not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren f But brother goeth 
to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. Now, therefore, there is 
utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye 
not rather take wrong f Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be de- 
frauded f Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren. 

Therefore in the face of so express a Sciiptural declaration upon this im- 
portant subject Baptists ought to refrain from the practice of going to law 
one with another, but resort to councils of arbitration for the adjudication of 
their differences. This is the only Scriptural remedy. The essential 
elements of an arbitration of this kind consists in, first — agreement on the 
part of litigants having a matter in dispute, to refer the matter to a tribunal 
composed of brethren believed to be impartial, and constituted in such a 
way as the terms of the agreement may specif}^, and to abide by the judg- 
ment ; and secondly, in consent on the part of the council to conduct the 
inquiry, and to deliver judgment. These councils may be organized some- 
what in the same way as councils for other purposes are, and in the main 
many of the rules laid down for the government of such tribunals are applic- 
able to those for arbitration purposes. Men who are members of the 
churches should be selected, and who are known for their piety, wisdom and 
sense of justice. They ought to be members of the same churches to which 
the parties litigant belong, provided impartial councillors can be mutually 
agreed upon in those churches. One discreet brother should be selected by 
each party and the power be given to these to select an umpire should they 
be unable to agree. As questions of legal import are likely to come before 
the council it would be well to have at least one lawyer upon the same, or 
at least the right to seek the advice of those learned in the law should be 
accorded, provided the parties so consulted are members of Baptist churches 
in good standing, and are willing to serve the council without a fee, as this 
might relieve the parties of any suspicion that -might otherwise rest upon 
them. For the want of a better name this tribunal might be called a 
Council of Reconciliation. 

As a mode of procedure before this council it might be best for the com- 
plaining party to lodge a plain untechnical statement of his complaint before 
this council of reconciliation, where both parties are then required to appear 
at an early day, in person and without counsel, and generally without 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 507 

witDesses, though, when deemed Decessary, witnesses may be heard. Before 
this tribunal, face to face, the parties may state their own cause, and may be 
also questioned by the council so far as they think necessary. This should 
generally close the examination of the case, but the council can allow or 
require witnesses to be called. Or the parties may agree in writing as to the 
facts of the case and submit that to the counci', and having thus acquired 
the facts so far as agreed upon, and the statements of each party upon dis- 
puted matters, as well as other evidence when it is deemed requisite, the 
council might carefully explain to the parties the law as they deem it applica- 
ble to the case, and also state what they deem the strict legal right to be ; 
and when the council, upon the whole case, legal and equitible, as well as 
moral, have heard the parties, they then might make such suggestions and give 
the parties such advice as is deemed just and appropriate in the premises. 
Having heard this advice it is obligatory upon the parties to stand to and 
abide by the decision if they have agreed so to do, otherwise it is entirely 
optionary with parties to adopt it or not. They may adopt it exactly as given, 
or they may reject it entirely as per the agreement entered into, or they may 
come to an agreement entirely of their own making, or to one based in part en 
the views of the council and in part upon their own conclusions. As stated in 
the preceding pages in regard to other councils the parties should always agree 
to abide by these determinations with a religious fidelity, otherwise it would 
be a waste of time But if no agreement or reconciliation is reached by the 
council, that fact is announced and noted of record, and the parties go hence 
with perfect liberty to abandon the matter or to call a new council as they 
may agree. On the other hand if an agreement is had, that agreement, 
whether it be that the matter be reconciled and abandoned, or that one 
party recovers of the other, is entered as the judgment of the court, should 
be final, and in many of the States of the United States is in all respects as 
binding and efficacious as the judgment of any other court. In many of the 
states under special legislation, execution may issue upon it, and it may be 
pleaded in complete bar of any other or future proceeding for the same com- 
plaint, or cause of action. 

Arbitration is a very reasonable mode, and one that is perfectly conform- 
able to and made obligatory by the law of the gospel, for the decision of 
every dispute over the property rights of church members, which does not 
directly interest the peace or safety of the church. It is obvious that there 
are certain conditions which must be satisfied in order to render arbitration 
even so much as possible. In the first place, the matter in dispute must in 
itself admit of being formulated in such a way as to be made a matter suit- 
able for a judicial decision, as distinguished from a mere matter of fellow- 
ship between two or more brethren. Of course, the terms of the reference 
may be large and indefinite, and considerable powers may be given to the 
council, or arbitrators of adjusting claims, even of an indeterminate kind, 
and making compensatory settlements of a variety of sorts. This condition 
points to the obvious suitability of arbitration to all cases in which the dis- 
pute relates to a matter of unsettled law, or to controverted matters of fact 



608 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDENCE ; 

claimed on the one side and denied on the other, or to the amount and kind 
of compensation due from an admitted wrong, or to monetary claims on the 
part of a brother against another. In all such matters as these, in the mere 
statement of the ground of dispute indicates a readiness to accept a coDcilia- 
tory solution of it, if such can be found compatible with the self-respect of 
both parties, the field for the friendly offices of a judicious council of arbi- 
tration in forming, or assisting to form, these tribunals, is almost illimitable ; 
and it is likely enough increased recourse will be had to this benign mode 
of reducing dissensions between brethren, as its value becomes better recog- 
nized, and the Scripture injunction upon this subject becomes the more 
deeply impressed upon Baptist churches. Thus, though the field of arbitra- 
tion is at the present time undoubtedly limited, there are two directions 
in which it is now undergoing, and may be made to undergo much more 
rapidly, further extension. In the first 'place, the sensitiveness of Baptist 
churches as to what touches their prerogatives, their existence and indepen- 
dence, is already being greatly reduced, and may be reduced still further, 
so as to take in and compass these objects, especially when a true view is 
taken of the utter scandal and disgrace of two brethren going to law, and of 
the superior concern which all Baptist churches have in the welfare, rather 
than in the misfortunes, of other churches, and the individual members com- 
posing them. 

If further proof were needed of a change coming over the spirit of Baptist 
churches in reference to the disreputable practice of a brother going to law 
with a brother, which may have issues in the future to which no limit can be 
assigned, it would suffice to refer to the extraordinary development of inter- 
church association and co-operation for all sorts of purposes which is mak- 
ing Baptist church government better understood. This development is 
no doubt, to a great extent a direct consequence of the present era of 
universal education that has dawned upon our people, and therefore, it 
might be held to be fairly adducible as a distinct ground for faith in the 
advent of a new order of ideas inimical to church councils in general as a 
Scriptural means of settling disputes between church and church and 
between brother and brother. But this growing habit of inter-church asso- 
ciation and co-operation, whatever its causes may be, is a phenomenon 
deserving attention on its own account, and one which every day is mani- 
festing itself in more various and noticeable forms. There is scarcely any 
part of the field of Baptist church jurisprudence, religious and philanthropic 
efibrt, or educational and journalistic enterprise, in which by means of 
councils, conventions, associations, societies and unions,. the whole Baptist 
family are not learning to organize themselves, in' exactly the same fashion 
in which the members of each local church train themselves, and were 
trained, to harmonize their erratic notions and desires, and submit to coun- 
cils as the only legitimate way of settling questions of great moment to all 
the churches alike. This progress is likely, indeed, to be more rapidly 
effected as between the members of different churches than in primitive 
times, inasmuch as culture and practice has now explained the benefits of 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 609 

these bodies, and long habits of ecclesiastical existence have accustomed 
Baptists to the discipline which these beneficent bodies impose. No one need 
any longer be in fear of these organizations, for there is in them the utter 
absence of any central force, such as exists in a community forming itself 
into a church, by which the independence of the churches is in the least 
interfered with, or recalcitrant members compelled to obedience. This want 
of force can never be supplied even by a higher state of culture, moral self- 
abnegation, nor even a greater concentration of mind and purpose to the 
achievement of a complete inter-church union for the purposes of govern- 
ment. How far this work will proceed in our system of government, and 
how rapidly, can only be a matter of conjecture, and opinions in respect to it 
will differ widely. But there can be no doubt that councils for reducing differ- 
ences between churches and individual members of churches to the smallest 
point are becoming more and more conspicuous, and are assuming a very 
practical shape, while their general tendency to promote lasting peace in our 
churches is unquestionable. 

Every Baptist council is the creature of the churches involved in and 
affected by a controversy between brethren or churches. It is not a party 
to the churches, but the result of them — the creation of those parties involved 
in those controversies. It is a mere agent, entrusted with limited powers 
for certain specific objects, which powers and objects are to be agreed upon 
between the parties concerned. Shall the agent be permitted to judge of 
the extent of his own powers, without reference to his constituent ? To a 
certain extent he is compelled to do this in the very act of exercising them, 
but this is always in subordination to the authority by v/hom his powers 
were conferred. If this were not so the result would be that the agent would 
possess every power which the constituent could confer, notwithstanding the 
plainest and most express terms of the grant. This would be against all 
principle and all reason. If such a rule should prevail in regard to church 
government written instructions to a council would be the idlest thing im- 
aginable. It would afford no barrier against the usurpations of a council, 
and no security for the rights and interest of the parties involved. If then 
a church has no authority to erect itself into a high court and try another 
church for some supposed breach of inter-church law, with what propriety 
can it be said that a council may do so ? This is an absurdity as pernicious 
as it is gross and palpable. If a council may determine the powers of a 
church it may pronounce them either more or less than they really are. 
But churches, as well as all parties, could have no right to complain of the 
decisions of a council which they had chosen for themselves as long as it 
kept within the limits of its powers, and refrained from the exercise of 
powers never conceded, inconsistent with private right and dangerous to the 
liberty of the churches. Considering the nature of our system of church 
government the churches ought to be, and I presume always will be, ex- 
tremely careful not to interpose their sovereign power against the decisions 
of a lawfully constituted council in any case where the council had jurisdic- 
tion. Of this character are the cases already cited ; such, for example, as 



^10 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHURCH JUBISPEUDENCE ,* 

those between the brethren of the same church, those involving the question 
of heresy taught by a minister or other public teacher which disturbs the 
peace and good order of the church or denominatioD, and especially such as 
concerns the conduct or character of ministers of the gospel. As to all these 
subjects the jurisdiction of a council is clear, and no church or party can 
have any interest to dispute it. The decisions of a council, properly chosen 
and agreed upon, therefore, ought to be considered as final and conclusive, 
as to the matters submitted to them, and when reported to, and adopted by, 
the church, it would be a breach of the contract on the part of the parties 
thereto to refuse submission to them. Churches should be very careful not 
to go beyond these enumerated cases in the calling of a council, for they can 
have no jurisdiction whatever. In all such cases the churches nmst neces- 
sarilly decide for themselves, and their decisions are final and conclusive. 
And their finding in all matters of this nature, whatever it may be, is bind- 
ing upon themselves, and upon their own membership and no farther, in 
that particular case. So far as the decision of any church in any case may 
claim the force of authority it is not, however, conclusive even upon those 
who pronounced it for all time, and certainly is not so beyond the sphere of 
their own government, otherwise their erroneous decisions might be perpetu- 
ated, , A sovereign church of our Lord Jesus Christ does not ask any one 
what is its rights, nor do they limit their powers by ecclesiastical precedents. 
Still less do they entrust important subjects to tribunals not their own, and 
least of all to the tribunals of that power against which their own power is 
asserted. All councils, therefore, are but the emanations of the sovereign 
power of the churches, and can neither limit nor control that power, for the 
churches created them. 

Church government is an organism for the purpose of preserving pure the 
faith and practice of the churches, and if that government fails to do this 
from a want of knowledge or energy, or because it endeavors systematically 
and continually to undermine and destroy these ends, those in the church, if 
any, w^ho are willing to contend for the faith, have the simple right to op- 
pose the church. The church is no longer a Scriptural one, though estab- 
lished according to all the formalities of the Scriptures, because no longer 
answering the purposes or obtaining the ends of the laws of the gospel. 
Baptist church government is hemmed in, and cannot go beyond a certain 
line. Every doctrine persistently taught, that is fundamentally heretical, of 
sufficient magnitude to amount to a departure from the faith, can and ought 
to be resisted, especially if all the common and regular means of redress 
have previously been fairly and honestly tried. By heresy, as here used, I 
mean a violent change of the fundamental doctrine or practice of the church 
from that known to and practiced by the denomination. As unpleasant as 
the^e upheavals sometimes are^ yet in many cases such disturbances have 
salutary results, because churches learn practically that they cannot violate 
the laws of God and man with impunity and be kept in the line of Scrip- 
tural churches. It must be admitted that our Baptist churches of to-day 
would not now exist in their purity had they not been obliged to submit, at 



OR^ THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 511 

some period, to attacks upon them from within and from without. Many 
of the doctrines of the churches would not now shine so brightly, unless at 
some time or other they had not passed through this process and crisis. 

Besides, litigation through the ordinary courts of the country between 
Baptists is demoralizing, is immoral and begets immorality ; it sets an example 
before the world that is degrading to Christianity, and never furnishes ad- 
vantages which can compensate for the evils it entails, and, as rational 
beings, both churches and individuals ought to settle their property rights 
through the medium of arbitration, before a tribunal of the saints, rather 
than through the courts of law. Litigation of this kind is always unjust on 
one side or the other, and is immoral in its effects as well as in its causes, 
and is ruinous to peace and order in the highest degree, both to the churches 
at large and to the individuals who engage in it. Christians going to law 
with one another, in all cases in which there is an evil intent on one side, is 
resorting to secular force, for it is very plain that by going to law the party 
in the wrong would not do the bidding of a court of law, and abide by its 
decision, were it not supported by public force. Men do not go to court to 
convince their adversaries, but to convince the judge. A law-suit between 
two Baptists amounts to this : Brother A has wronged brother B ; B goes 
to law, and demands assistance against A. The law says, " I will lend 
assistance, but I must first be convinced that you are not mistaken in your 
contention, or that you do not mean, perhaps, to wrong A. Go to C, who 
has been appointed to adjudicate such cases. He is judge and will see who is 
right ; and if he says that you are right, come back, and I will lend you force 
to obtain your right from A." Here we have all the machinery of a court 
of justice, in the make-up of which we have no choice. The question is, if 
the object in going to law is to convince the judge, and not your adversary, 
can you not more readily convince a judicious council of your own brethren 
selected' by mutal consent, than a secular court which may be against your 
interests, and not in sympathy with you to start in with ? 

To one who has been schooled in the science and practice of the civil law 
this subject is of vast interest and affords much food for thought, especially 
to Baptist lawyers. We have seen how circumspect Baptist churches must 
be lest they forfeit their existence as a church and their rights to church 
property Avhich they themselves have helped to pay for. It is a law of the 
gospel that Ye are not your own. In a more significant sense it often happens 
that property w^hich one helps to purchase and dedicates to God and his true 
worship is forfeited when it has been prostituted to profane purposes and to 
other uses than to his true worship. Men must be true not only to God, but 
to their brethren with whom they have covenanted to keep the faith. Infi- 
delity carries w^ith it its own reward. Sometimes the strong arm of the 
civil law is resorted to in order to compel men not only to be faithful, but to 
be honest. These are matters pre-eminently fit to be referred to Baptist 
councils or arbitration committees who might often appease the rigor of the 
common law that need often such a tribunal to moderate it. 



512 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPEUDENCE ; 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

PAPAL CHUECH GOVERNMENT — IN WHICH THE OFFICE AND 
FUNCTIONS OF A POPE ARE CHALLENGED. 

THE best, and indeed tlie only way to test the legality of an ecclesiastical 
office or institution is to compare it with that which was set up by 
Christ and his apostles while on earth. To do this, therefore, we must know 
and understand thoroughly what was instituted by the apostles and to rightly 
compare it with existing establishments, and find out, if possible, whence 
came the ideas implied by them. Are they divine, or are they human ? 

From every view that can be taken of the subject, reasoning on principle 
and from Scripture the doctrine of divine right, upon which alone the papacy 
is established, as the foundation of a claim, in any one, to the ruling power in 
the ministry, is utterly absurd. It belongs to a later age than that of the 
apostolic, and is characteristic of the superstition and idolatry which pre- 
vailed long after the death of the founders of the churches of Christ. We 
have heretofore demonstrated that all ministers are by Divine right equal 
and equally free. Christ made them so, and the equalities which have 
grown up among them, and the governments ecclesiastical which have been 
established over them, founded on other principles, have proceeded from 
other causes, by which their ministerial rights have been subverted. We 
must trace ministerial rights and functions to other sources, and in doing so, 
view things as they are and not indulge in superstitious, visionary and 
fanciful speculations. 

It is the crowing virtue of Baptists that they have not implicit faith in 
anything but Christ, and his infallible word. To place implicit faith in a 
mortal man or an erring church to the exclusion of Christ and his word is 
the foundation stone of the papal church, and it will stand as long as those 
who compose the Cathohc church can be persuaded to submit their con- 
sciences alone to the word of the pope and his priests, and esteem themselves 
discharged from the necessity of searching the Scriptures, in order to know 
whether the things that are told them are true or false. Whereas, the true 
rule is, that such as have common sense and are imbued with liberty of con- 
science ought to make use of this liberty in those- things that concern them- 
selves and the church of Christ, and to suspect the words of such as are in- 
terested in deceiving, or persuading them not to see with their own eyes, that 
they may be the more easily deceived. This rule obliges us so far to search 
into matters of ecclesiastical government in general, and our own in particular. 
And should any question the propriety of this animadversion against Catholic 
church government, I have only to say that they who exercise that govern- 



OK, THE COMMO:^- LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 513 

ment have no right to do so, and that there is no man to whom it belongs, 
and no one man who has not as good a title to it as any other. There is not, 
therefore, any one man who has not a right, by legitimate criticisms and 
arguments, to overthrow that which has none at all. He who has no part 
in that system of government may contribute to its overthrow, as well as he 
who has the greatest, for he neither, has that which God ordained he should 
have, nor shows a title to that which he enjoys from that original prerogative 
of birth or succession, from whence it can only be derived. For it is im- 
possible to treat of the different kinds of ecclesiastical governments in their 
most perfect form, so as to take a comprehensive view of their respective 
merits, without looking at them likewise in their worst state. 

It is evident that in the Scripture Christ has ordained ecclesiastical powers 
and made ample provision for the ministry, prescribing their powers and 
duties ; but he has given no one of them more power than another, because 
we have shown by the law of the gospel all ministers are equal. This I 
take to be the genuine sense of the Scriptures, and the most lawful way of 
interpreting the places relating to the subject. Instead of constituting many 
free and independent churches which Baptists take to be models fit to be 
imita,ted throughout all time to come, Christ might have instituted an uni- 
versal or consolidated church government, and have declared one of the 
apostles should be pope with full power to rule over the churches and his 
brethren, and his will to be their law. This would have been more suitable 
to the goodness and mercy of Christ than to have left us in the dark, or 
rather to make the ecclesiastical government given to his own people, a false 
light to lead them to destruction. To speak truthfully it is hard to think 
seriously of an universal church erected for rule and government, as to think 
any man to be in earnest who mentions it. Notwithstanding this our Catho- 
lic brethren bestow the proud title* of Christ's vicegerent and lord para- 
mount upon the humble Apostle Peter who exercised no more power, and 
probably not so much as some of his brethren, and was utterly void of all 
worldly glory, splendor and power, such as popes now exercise. 

In the first place, before entering upon the question of the power and 
authority of the papacy, it would be well to give a short history of the part 
that Roman Catholic popes have taken in the government of the Catholic 
church. Up to the middle of the second century each church was sub- 
stantially and really independent of every other. After the middle of the 
second century the departure from apostolic church government com- 
menced, and the new system of government then set up was, for several cen- 
turies, an ecclesiastical aristocracy ; nearly all its powers were exercised by 
bishops and by synods and councils of bishops and high orders of the clergy; 
but finally it degenerated into an absolute ecclesiastical monarchy, and the 
whole power vested in a pope. This was the natural and necessary conse- 
quence of the ignorance of the great mass of the people, before the inven- 
tion of printing, and the general diffusion of learning and intelligence. The 
government of the Roman Catholic church is a complete monarchy, based 
on a religious aristocracy, appointed for life by the pope, who is a complete 
33 



514 A TPvEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

monarcli, and they in turn elect his successor. The pope is elected as the 
head of the church, as a monarch for life, by the college of cardinals, seventy 
in number. When elected he has supreme and absolute power over the 
church, legislative, executive, elective and judicial, and has no charter or 
constitution, law or gospel to limit his power. Its laws he often changes 
without the aid of a council, and no general council can be convened with- 
out his order ; and when assembled he can veto all its proceediugs and dis- 
band it at pleasure. All the members of these councils consist of cardinals 
and bishops appointed either by the pope himself or by his predecessors, and 
the people have no voice in the matter. The pope not only appoints the 
cardinals, but all other higher orders of the clergy, including the bishops ; 
not only in Europe, but in America and elsewhere. The bishops in their 
respective dioceses select and train up young men for the ministry, and ap- 
point and ordain all the lower orders of the clergy, send them wherever 
they please, to take charge of, and exercise ecclesiastical authority over the 
people, without consulting them, and without their consent ; and the priest- 
hood claim and generally exercise the sole right, either by themselves or by 
their representatives, to instruct the people in all matters of education in 
order to form and guide their opinions in all matters of morals and civil gov- 
ernment as well as in religion. 

And it is a matter of history that no effort has ever been made in any 
Catholic country, to educate the mass of the people, or any of the common 
classes, except some few selected by the priests, to be educated for the min- 
istry. The whole of the zeal and exertions of the bishops and priests seem 
to be directed to train up youug men for the priesthood, and to educate, 
mould the minds and views, and form the opinions of the noble and wealthy 
classes, who are to fill the learned professions and places in civil government, 
and to make agents and instruments of them, to manage and govern the 
people; and to leave the mass of the people in ignorance, that they may be 
the more easily governed and directed in the propagation of the catholic 
religion. If, however, it be denied that it was the object of the pope to 
enslave his people directly, it cannot be gainsaid that it was his purpose to 
mould their minds and opinions in such a manner as to make them perfectly 
submissive, and capable of being led by advice and persuasion wherever 
and in whatever manner they desired ; force was however resorted to, when 
persuasion failed, and the Inquisition was finally devised as the most 
effectual means of applying force, and accomplishing the object. 

The fact is well attested by many candid writers and historians, that the 
popes and other great leaders of the church of Eome struggled during cen- 
turies for temporal dominion, as well as spiritual, supremacy ; to make the 
pope an universal monarch, temporal as well as spiritual ; and it is probable 
that they did not give up this object until they were humbled by the upris- 
ing of an indignant and long-suffering people. And it is not strange that 
such a combination of learning and talent, ignorance and superstition, all 
obedient to one man, acting in concert, operating upon the hopes and fears 
,.of the mass of the people, and wielding their prejudices and passions at will, 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 515 

should enable the pope to crown and dethrone kings at pleasure, and to 
require the proud monarchs of England and France to hold the stirrups of 
his saddle while he mounted his horse, as was done in the twelfth century. 
Not only the pope, but all the catholic priesthood claimed perfect exemp- 
tion from any subjection to the civil power. They insisted that the clergy 
could be tried only by the church, that is, by brother members of the cleri- 
cal profession, and could not be tried even for the highest crimes, by the civil 
courts. They succeeded in carrying this abominable doctrine into practice ; 
and even in England, the plea of a criminal charged with a crime of the 
most atrocious character, that he was a clergyman, if true, was treated as a 
vaHd plea in abatement ; and the culprit was discharged, to be tried, and 
perhaps only reprimanded by his brethren of the clergy. Such was the 
supremacy they gained over the civil government and laws throughout all 
countries where the popes of Rome held the supremacy ; and such the in- 
fluence, like a spell of enchantment over the popular mind, that they not 
only thought for the mass of the people, and moulded their minds, views 
and opinions according to their own wishes, and fitted them to submit quietly 
to the clerical yoke, but by enslaving their minds, they took away from 
them all desire for freedom and independence. They were required to have 
faith without proofs, and mental conviction of the truths of the Scriptures, 
without sufficient learning and capacity to examine and understand the 
force and effect of the evidences upon which those truths are founded. 

In this mode, doctrines and usages not enjoined by the Scriptures, but 
which arose from the condition and ignorance of the people, have been 
sought to be perpetuated by the pope and clergy of the Catholic church, as 
a means of keeping the laity in subjection and in spiritual bondage for cen- 
turies after enlightenment and the dissemination of learning had removed 
the causes upon which such doctrines and practices were founded. They 
taught two of the most pernicious principles, the most dangerous and 
destructive to morals and civilization, ever inculcated upon earth : the first, 
that their religious doctrines and dogmas should be propagated and extended 
by the power of the sword ; the second, that the church was not bound to 
keep faith or any engagements with those they deemed heretics, but that 
they might mercilessly put them to death for their religious belief. The 
establishment of the inquisition in the thirteenth century appears to have 
been the first general and systematic attempt of the Roman Catholic church 
to propagate their dogmas by force ; by using physical punishment to com- 
pel others to renounce their religious opinions, which were not in accordance 
with those of the church, by putting to the sword and to the stake all per- 
sons in their power who would not receive their doctrines. In the fourteenth 
century, statutes were enacted in England, at the instance of the pope and 
his clergy, authorizing the apprehension, trial and execution by the bar- 
barous practice of burning, of all persons convicted of heresy in matters of 
religion. Such were the intolerant opinions then prevailing, and, to some 
extent, yet prevailing in all catholic countries. Such are the general outlines, 
briefly stated, of this stupendous fabric and machinery of ecclesiastical gov- 



516 A TREATISE TJPON BAPTIST CHURCH JTTEISPRUDENCE ; 

ernment, the authority for which we are here to examine, to see whether it 
be from God or from the evil one. 

The Koman Catholic church, which has departed further from the plan 
of the apostolic churches than any other, is as fruitful in preserving its 
power as the seven-headed serpent is said to have been in evil,^when one 
head was cut off, many rise up in the place of it. When monarchical gov- 
ernments, which have ever been the nurse of the Catholic church, could no 
longer tolerate and endure its corrupt domination over them, put an end 
to that rule, it then turned its lustful eyes towards the United States, and is 
now fastening its claws and fetters upon this free government. There are 
no words of praise too extravagant for the pope to bestow upon a republi- 
can form of governmeut. All at once it dawns upon him that liberty and 
freedom, such as we enjoy, are great succors to Catholicism, and that there 
is no missionary field like it. And if the history of the past belies not 
itself, it is no advantage to a free government to choose excellent men to 
office, for in those times in the past, in those governments where the pope 
had full sway and ruled the rulers, and a necessity was laid upon every 
people to choose the worst of m,en, for the reason they were the worst and 
most like themselves, lest that virtuous and good men should come into 
power, they should be excluded for being vicious and wicked. Bfy this 
means every people know when they are in danger. But if all should de- 
pend upon the will of an ecclesiastic, whose power is inflated, puffed up and 
distorted, the worst would often be the most safe, and the best in the greatest 
danger. The crudest would often be advanced and the good and the true 
scorned and neglected. The freest and most generous nations have, above 
all things, sought to avoid this evil. Such nations as have overthrown this 
monstrous power, and are no longer under its accursed sway, have enjoyed 
religious liberty, and such as are yet in its cruel clutches are still groping 
their way in ignorance and superstition. It is in vain to say that this proceeded 
from the fatal corruptions of the ages ; for that corruption proceeded from 
the government under the dominion of the pope and his emissaries, and the 
ensuing desolation was the effect of it. And as the like disorder in all gov- 
ernments united with the state, and ruled over by the secret influence of 
ecclesiastics, will appear and. prevail in this free land, unless Americans are 
vigilant and watchful of their religious liberties, and nip in the bud the first 
encroachments upon them. " Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," is a 
saying as true to-day as when it was first spoken. It will take a nation born 
for war to resist such a church when the proper time comes to strike. "SVhat- 
ever is defective in our system of free government, which makes these things 
possible, can only be supplied by the constant vigilance of every true 
American. 

With the Catholic church, time changes nothing, but the changes in 
methods proceed only from the change of governments. A republic domi- 
nated by r. pope would be as pliant in the hands of the pope as the mon- 
archies of old were. The seeds are being sown and the end will be reached, 
unless time is taken by the forelock and the calamities averted. This is a 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 517 

lesson republics must learn, and the sooner the better. The free government 
of the United States is of all governments the most liable to this danger, 
and no one knows it better than the pope. They, therefore, who say that 
popes and priests are bound to uphold and preserve the religious hberties of 
a nation^ and yet lay for a foundation that laws both human and divine are 
no more than the signification of their pleasure, seeks to delude the church 
and the world with words which signify nothing. The vanities of these 
whimsies will further appear if it be considered that ministers are ministers 
by the law of the gospel, and popes and priests by overthrowing the law. 
The mischiefs designed are dissembled and denied, and will continue to be 
until they are past all possibility of being cured by any other way than force, 
and such governments of the world as have been driven to use that remedy, 
learned very late that they had to use force or perish forever. And they 
who in the past had to draw the sword against this monstrous church, threw 
away the scabbard, for they who were compelled to do so were sure to be 
ruined if they miscarried, so ferocious is religious fanaticism when driven to 
extremities. These things are the growth and outgrowth of that most perni- 
cious doctrine that there is such a thing in ecclesiastical government as an 
universal church on earth w ith a ruler at its head to govern it. This strikes 
at the root of Christ's ordinance that there are independent local churches 
with a separate pastor over each, and ruled by the membership of each ; 
that there are Scriptural laws and general and particular customs and usages 
for their government as best please the membership. But nevertheless, 
when the dangers that threaten a people are manifest, they ought to lay aside 
all ceremonies and begin to cast about them for the things that make for 
their defence, and proceed against such a people as are enemies to their lib- 
erties, and by that means preserve themselves from utter ruin. The same 
course is justly used against any other enemies of the government, who take 
upon themselves a power which the law does not give. It was not for this 
that they received the commission, Go ye into all the world and preach the 
gospel, and may and ought to be restrained as any other public enemy. The 
Christian ministry is not set up to do what they please, but what the gospel 
appoints for the good of men's souls alone ; and as they have no other power 
than what the gospel allows, so the same gospel limits and directs the exer- 
cise of that which they have. And if one of these ministers, although he 
may call himself Christ's vicegerent on earth, may be duly opposed, — yea, 
even exterminated, when he commits acts unbecoming a loyal citizen, and 
no man will deny, that if one of them, by an outrageous violence, should 
endeavor to overthrow the government, although he might contend that it 
was for the good of the church, he might, by violence, be suppressed and 
chastised. 

The worst of men seldom all at once arrive at such a degree of impu- 
dence, as to propose the greatest mischiefs and enormities. Those who are 
under no law, and fear not God nor man, dare not offer such things as the 
world will not bear, lest by that means they should overthrow their own 
designs. All poison must be disguised, and no man can be persuaded to 



518 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUPvCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

swallow arsenic, unless it be covered wjtli sometliing that appears harmless. 
Mother Eve and father Adam would not have eaten the forbidden fruit if it 
had not seemed to be good and pleasant, and had not been induced to believe 
that by eating it they should both be as Gods. Evil men with evil designs 
have always followed the same method. Their malice is carried on by 
fraud, and they have seldom destroyed any, but such as they have deceived. 
Truth can never conduce to mischief, and is best discovered by plain words, 
but nothing is more usual with bold bad men than to cover their mischiefs 
and designs by figurative phrases, and hypocritical pretences. It would be 
too ridiculous to say in plain terms that the pope of Rome held in his hand 
to be used at his will, a temporal as w^ell as a spiritual sword, and that he is 
better able to judge of all matters both human and divine than any, or all, 
of his people ! And that, therefore, the pope must be called the head of 
the church on earth, and that thereby he may be invested with all the pre- 
eminences which in a natural body belong to that part of the human anatomy, 
and men must by deception or force be made to believe the analogy between 
the natural and ecclesiastical body to be perfect. 

But the matter must be better examined before this mortal and spiritual 
poison can be swallowed. It is true the natural body cannot subsist without 
the natural head, but the churches of Christ can subsist without a pope. 
For the churches did, in the times of the apostles, not only subsist without a 
pope, but without any such head, before he, by the help of a misguided 
ministry, had usurped the name and power of a pope, which shows that to 
have a man at the head of the church may ba a matter of choice and con- 
venience, but not of necessity. Baptist churches never had one, never will 
have one, and have no use for one ; neither did the apostolic churches. 

As to Peter and the other apostles, all equally exercised a charitable care 
over the churches and such of their members as were inferior to them in 
office and power without any shadow of rulership or sovereignty. And such 
as were under their care are said to have been their brethren, which is not a 
word of majesty and domination, but of dearness and equality. We hear 
nothing of holy father, his eminence^ his highness, or his majesty! The 
name, therefore, of head of the church, or pastor of a church, may be given 
to a minister, but it implies nothing of sovereignty, and must be exercised 
with charity and without power, which always terminates in the good of 
others. The head cannot correct or chastise, it cannot wield a sword, the 
proper mark of that part of the body is only to vindicate, and he who takes 
upon himself to do more, is not the head. How can he be the head of the 
whole Christian world, who neither knows, never saw, and cares not for the 
members, nor understands the things that conduce to their good, more 
especially if he set up an interest in himself against them ? It cannot be 
said that these are imaginary cases, and that no pope has ever done these 
things, for the proofs are too easy, and the examples too numerous. In 
those dark ages when popes w^ere the maddest and most ferocious, if the 
question arose as to who should succeed to the papal chair and office, the 
answer was, choose him who had the sharpest sword and could wield it in 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 519 

the most cruel and merciless manner. Even if he were well disposed he 
could do no more than suspend the mischief for a while, but could not 
correct the corrupt principles of their church government which alone made 
it possible for such things to exist. 

This universal church which has bred and sustains a pope, is not a crea- 
tion of Christ, but a development out of a wild speculation as to what a 
church of Christ ought to be, and forged into its present organic form under 
the mistaken impression that Christ left no form of government for his 
churches, and that Christians were left in their liberty to establish such as 
best pleased themselves. One universal supreme government is established 
or ought to be established over all the churches in Christendom with a ruler 
over all, and no limits can be set to the power of the person that manages it. 
The dominion of the head of this church is over all, and we are not to ex- 
amine whether this ruler be virtuous or vicious, sober-minded or stark mad ; 
the right and power is the same in all. Whether truth be exalted or sup- 
pressed, whether he bears a temporal sword or a spiritual one it matters not, 
for both by a divine right were placed in his hands to be wielded at his 
pleasure ; whether he that bears the sword does so to exterminate those who 
do righteousness, or to defend those who do evil, it concerns us not ! for the 
pope must not lose his right, nor have his power diminished on any account. 
"When we stop to think of these things and examine into them we wonder 
how things of this nature could enter into the heads of human beings pro- 
fessing Christianity and claiming to be followers of the meek and lowly 
Saviour. One would suppose that the popes of the earth, even those who 
served in the darkest ages of the church, professing to be Christ's vicegerents 
and Fathers of the Holy Church, would have sought the good of the church, 
but it seems no such things are to be expected from them. The church 
being united with the State they considered nations as a Texas ranchman 
does his vast herds and flocks, according to the profit that can be made of 
them. If this be true, and the history of those dreadful times attests the 
facts, they look upon not only the church, but nations as their patrimony, 
and upon the people as their subjects, not to do them any good, for their 
own sakes, or because it is their duty, but only that they may be useful to 
them, as oxen are put into plentiful pastures that they may be strong for 
labor under the yoke, or fit for slaughter. And yet this is the divine model 
of government for the church of our Lord Jesus Christ that Catholics ofier 
to the world ! But we must be charitable to our fellow-Christians and con- 
clude that all people, especially Americans, are lovers of reUgious liberty 
and could never be brought under the dominion of such a church unless 
they were made to believe that in conscience they ought to do it, and that 
they will be eternally damned if they do not do it, and that there is a super- 
stition born and bred in them which they cannot dispel, and which puts the 
examination of these things out of their power. 

The error of not examining into these weighty matters that so vitally con- 
cern their souls may, perhaps, deserve to be pardoned in those who are for- 
bidden the right and privilege of reading and interpreting the Scriptures for 



520 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

themselves, as proceeding from ignorance ; if, indeed, a professed Christian 
can be excused when they neglect the study of the nature of the govern- 
ment of Christ's churches which requires the best efforts of their minds and 
the very highest knowledge. This woeful ignorance can be only dispelled 
by a resort to the word of God with a permit to read and study it for them- 
selves, where they will find no authority to have a pope and no use for one 
if they did have one, as there was no use for Peter, as a pope, but they will 
find that they have a right to elect their own pastors, and such as are so 
constituted owe an account of their actions and conduct to those by whom, 
and for whom they are elected. They will also learn that the government 
of Christ's churches is his own creation, and that nothing of this kind was 
ever left to the choice of men, and put it in a way from which it cannot 
swerve. One form was created for all the churches alike, and like the laws 
of the Medes and Persians it cannot be changed, but must last forever, and 
specific limits are set to its powers, and to the persons that rule it. Csesar, 
or his counterpart, the pope, has no part or place in it. This is Christ's 
Royal Charter granted to his elect upon earth. Who but him could be 
head over all to such a church. Good and wise men will say with Moses : 
I cannot bear the burden f He saw that the Lord should appoint helps for 
his many infirmities ; he shrank from the responsibilities ; but a Roman 
Catholic pope can say : Give unto me all power both in heaven and earth, 
that I might rule with an iron hand the church of the living God ! 

It is not enough to say that the universal system of ecclesiastical govern- 
ment was established by Christ, or that it has his divine sanction, unless a 
tlius sayeth the law can be found for it. Neither will it do to take pieces of 
passages of Scriptures and turn them directly against their meaning and scope 
to round out a theory, and justify that which Christ never instituted. When 
the departure from the true form of church government first commenced it was 
in the latter part of the first and the beginning of the second century, of the 
Christian era when the Christian religion was comparatively in its infancy ; 
the churches were composed in the main of unpretentious converts, who, 
though they soon grew to be considerable in number, were for the most part 
men of humble wit and wisdom, who, knowing themselves to be freed from 
the power of sin and the evil one, presumed they were also freed from the 
obligation of laws both human and divine. At this time it was peculiarly 
the work of the men of that early time, in which those who preached and 
propagated the gospel w^ere diverted from their duty, by entangling them- 
selves in the care of secular affairs, and being allured by the blandishments 
of priestly pomp and power, they unwittingly departed from the teach- 
ings of Christ and his apostles. But since the reception of such loose ideas 
of the sacred laws of God was the extirpation of all true government, there 
were those even then who doubtless looked to another rule of obedience, and 
found that to be the law which is expressly laid down in the Scriptures, 
based not on the depraved and perverted will of man, which fluctuates 
according to the different interests, humors and passions that reign in design- 
ing men, which abrogates that which had been enacted by God. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 521 

"Whereas, Christ had established by law his church two or three hundred 
years before this sad departure, and as no body of men can be a rightful 
church except by law, nor have any just power but from the law, that power 
which afterwards founded a different church upon different principles was 
both mythical and whimsical. If this could be done with impunity there is 
no need of ecclesiastical law for the government of God's people, and the 
founding of any polity upon these principles, would be and really was, as 
history has abundantly shown, a perpetual exercise of misdirected zeal, rage, 
malice and madness, by which the worst of men were armed with powder to 
destroy the best. For catholics are taught to believe that the pope of Kome 
has a divine personage, and w^henever such a man is seated in the papal 
chair he ought by divine right to reign ; he bears in his sacred person the 
divine character of an ecclesiastical and political person ; God has raised 
him above all, and such as will not submit to him ought to be counted the 
sons of Belial, brought forth and slain like cattle. When such men reign, 
and are too well furnished with means to accomplish their detestable designs, 
well may we condemn that system of church polity which makes such things 
possible. And if some otherwise well-meaning Christians have been so stupid 
as not to foresee the mischief of such a government. Baptists more wise and 
more loyal to Christ could no more be induced to adopt that system than to 
deny their Lord and Master by going pell-mell into any other pernicious 
heresy. And though this advanced latitudinarian and human authority is 
in direct derogation of the divine, to a degree that may please such as are of 
that way of thinking, yet Baptists resolving rather to obey the laws of God 
than the commands of men could not be induced to enter such a government. 

No minister can have any power peculiar to himself unless they w^ho had 
the right conferred it upon him. For it is not the ministry that gives to the 
church, but the church to the ministry. If they who place a minister in his 
office had no right to give what they did, none was conferred upon the 
receiver. If they had a right, he that should pretend to derive a benefit 
from them, must first prove the grant, that the nature and intention of it 
may appear. K it be admitted that ministers who rule in high offices, rule 
alone by a divine right (which is absolutely denied), it would prove nothing 
which is contrary to the plain teaching of the Scriptures ; and if the proofs 
are wanting the defects can never be supplied by any amount of admission, 
or if power be pretended to be grounded upon a divine right alone, the thing 
to be proved is, that Christ did really confer such a right upon Peter, or 
some one of the other apostles. And if no such thing appears, the proceed- 
ings of one or more ministers as if they had such power, can be of no value. 
But in case of any one of the apostles, no such grant can be proved to have 
been made, or, at least, none of them, not even Peter, ever exercised any 
ruling power over the churches, or any of those who succeeded him. And if 
they had it not, or did not exercise such power, their successors could not 
inherit it or succeed to it, and consequently cannot have it, or, at least, no 
better title to it than that of usurpation. If Peter was singled out and made 
ruler of all the then existino^ churches and Christians, it were meet and 



522 

proper that he assumed the reins of church government and asserted the 
right and assumed the duties of a ruler, in order that he might justify his 
title to what he possessed, and to what had been conferred upon him. If 
Peter had been appointed ruler of the churchy he could have done the church 
and the cause of Christianity no greater evil than by doing nothing, for by 
so doing the law under which he was appointed was thereby perverted or 
rendered useless, null and void. 

This must have been done by some one, and no man could be so 
fit as he who had been made chief among them. This was nothing 
more than what was expected of him, and what was usual among 
those appointed to office. The governor of a state, the speaker of 
any house of representatives, or the mayor of any city, when elected or 
appointed to these places assume the reins of government and do and perform 
the duties of the offices respectively to which they had been elected. It is 
as ridiculous to think of retrieving that which from the beginning of the 
gospel was lost, or never was exercised, as to create that which never was. 
But we may go further and affirm that though there had been such a right 
in the first ministers of the gospel, and they never used it, it must have 
necessarily perished from non-use, for it is folly for a man to pretend to an 
inheritance, who cannot prove himself to be the rightful heir, and he ^ alone 
is a rightful minister who now fills a ministerial position such as we see 
exercised in the very earliest times of the Christian dispensation, when those 
,were yet living whose business it was to set limits and bounds to these weighty 
matters. Did Peter perform t lie office of a pope? Let there be pointed 
out one act of rule or dominion he ever exercised over the churches, by 
virtue of this pretended power granted him. Compare his acts with those of 
Paul and answer which one approached nearest to that of a ruler, or to that 
of a pope ? Contrast the acts of Peter with that of the pope of to-day. We 
see in him no rule, no dominion, no show, no ostentation, no pomp, no splen- 
dor. All the veneration that is, or can be given to his acts, does not exalt 
him above his brethren. Hence nothing can be more ridiculously absurd 
than to impute to the humble God-like man Peter, a power which he had 
not, at least which he is positively known never to have exercised, and to 
assign the name of pope to his pretended successors when, in fact, in the 
gospel economy there was no such office. All that Catholics can insist upon 
is that we can only look to the pretended office and usurped power of a pope, 
without any proof that Peter ever exercised either, and can show no Scrip- 
tural means and ways by which he obtained it, but who now enjoins a blind 
submission to his pretended successors. It ought not to be considered 
impertinent to ask to be given the marks by which a lawful pope is dis- 
tinguished from an usurper, and in what a just title to the popedom consists. 
If they place it in an hereditary succession, we ought to know and be in- 
formed whether this right must be deduced from Peter or some impostor or 
usurper set up long after his death, or from some visionary lord of mankind. 
If from a universal lord, the same descent that gives him a right to rule over 
Catholics, enslaves the whole Christian world to him. If these things be so. 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 523 

proof must be given hov; it came to be so, for if there was a defect in the first 
iucipiency of the power it can never be repaired, and the possession of the 
power in Catholics is nothing more than a continued usurpation. 

Therefore, that which ought not to be and is unscriptural, is no more to 
be received than if it could not be. No man can usurp that which never 
was and of right ought not to be. Neither can any man justly impose any- 
thing upon those who owe him no allegiance. If this can be done by force 
we are to examine how it can be possible or justifiable, for he that forces 
must be stronger than those that are forced. To talk of one man who in 
strength exceeds that of many millions of men, is to go beyond the extrava- 
gance of fables and romances. There is no difierence between force and 
usurpation, for the one would be as lawful as the other. Our contention is 
about the right of the thing. It will not do to ascribe the enlargement of 
papal power to irresistible development, as some authors have done. It will 
not do to say that inasmuch as Christ made the early Christians naturally 
free, they were at liberty to form such governments as best pleased them- 
selves. It is, indeed, a strange liberty, the exercise of which subjects them 
to the dominion and domineering will of one man. If they were born into 
the kingdom of Christ free men, and afterwards surrendered that freedom, 
it were the same as to be born under the necessity of perpetual slavery ; no 
freedom can be of any use to them, for all must forever depend on the will 
of the pope and his priests, how cruel and proud, or wicked soever they may 
be. It is unreasonable to believe that Christians can be brought under such 
subjection. We are led to the conclusion that every man is free and ex- 
empt from the dominion of another, although he be called a minister of 
Christ, as were the apostles free from the dominion of one another. It is 
hard to see how that Catholics can arrive at the conclusion that any one of 
them was above another, and came to be master of the others, equal to him- 
self in right and power. The apostles and other early ministers of the gos- 
pel were co-laborers, without any other preference of one above another, 
than what arose from the advantages Christ had given to any particular one 
of them. Thus Paul who said of himself: I am in iiothing inferior to the 
very chiefest apostle, seemed to be the most gifted, and was really the prince 
among them, so to speak, but nevertheless one without power to rule the 
churches. This I take to be proof to the utmost extent and certainty, that 
the equality among them was then perfect. He, therefore, that will deny it 
to be so now, ought to prove that neither the apostles or first ministers of 
the churches, or the early fathers of the churches, did ever understand, or 
regard the law declared by Christ to the churches ; or that ministerial power 
having been equally distributed at first, and so continued for two hundred 
or more years, it was abolished and a new one introduced, not by the au- 
thority of man, but by the command of Christ. But until it does appear to 
us, when, where, how, and by whom this was done, we may safely believe 
there is no such thing ; and that no man is or can be an ecclesiastical lord 
amongst us. 

Church government and the office of the apostles who founded it was 



524 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

created by Christ. They who gave a being to it cannot but have a right of 
regulating, limiting and directing it equally as best please themselves under 
the laws of and according to the rules of its creation ; and hence all this 
pretense concerning the absolute power of one man falls to the ground. But 
if the now reigning pope who claims to rule by divine right and Avould 
justify it, he might do well to tell, or some one for him, who created his 
office, when it was done, how it was done, and with what assistance, and 
upon what reason he undertook to be Christ's prime minister on earth. For 
he can ground no title upon the obscurity of an unsearchable antiquity ; if 
he does not, he ought to be looked upon as an impostor. The existence or 
first beginning of the Baptists is said to be " hid in the remotest depths of 
antiquity.'' This would amount to but very little in their favor, if their 
church government did not resemble that of the apostolic churches. If it 
were a monstrous distortion of, and a departure from the models of those 
churches, it would not matter whether the churches were new or old, they 
would be unlawful. Age cannot improve wine if the wine, instead of beiug 
wine, happened to be water. Yet the pope claims to be the perpetual lord 
paramount of the ecclesiastical world ! It is a pity Peter did not know this. 
It is possible that Peter was commissioned lord of all the earth, and through 
ignorance of his title did not have wit enough to supplant his ai^ostolic 
brethren who shared the honor of ruling the churches equally with him, as 
equals can have no right over each other. 

A perverted judgment always leads men into error, and persuades them 
to believe that those things favor their cause, that utterly overthrow it. In 
proof of this let us apply it more specifically to the Scriptures that catholics 
rely upon to bolster up the papal power. They found the right of the pope 
upon the passage that says : Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I build my 
church. Whatever is the import of this passage, it is exceedingly difiicult 
to see how, that by it, the papal power was conferred upon Peter. It is 
exceedingly strange that out of all the New Testament Scriptures no other 
authority can be found more pertinent to this purpose. By these words, and 
also the words concerning the Keys of the kingdom of heaven, being given to 
him, by virtue whereof Peter is pretended to have been made pope, it is 
strange that he and the rest of the apostles should still be so ignorant of it as 
to question. Which one of them should be the greatest f Yet, it is stranger 
still that our Saviour should not set them right, and once for all settle this 
vexed question by telling them that Peter was the man ; that he should have 
all power in heaven and earth, that he should wield the sword, both spiritual 
and temporal, and be unto him his vicegerent and lord paramount over all 
others in the Christian church throughout all time to come. No less wonder 
was it that all the apostles mentioning Peter often, they should do it without 
any title of honor, and did not give to him the highest title of honor such as 
Holy Father, His Eminence the Pope, but place him on an equality with the 
rest of the apostles, and say, God hath appointed, (not Peter the pope, and 
then the rest of the apostles, but) first apostles, secondly prophets. If the 
apostles were all first, no one of them was, or could be, before the rest. Be- 



OR, THE C0MM0:N- LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 525 

sides probably comparing himself with Peter, the apostle Paul said I am 
in )iothing inferior to the very chiefest apostle. 

But if there should be any doubt about this, the question is settled beyond 
a,ny quibble, when we consider that it was incredible that Peter should have 
any authority over them, and yet exercise no one act of authority over them, 
and that they should show him no sign of subjection. This is about as 
strange as that the President of the United States, for four years together, ' 
after his election, should do no acts of authority, have no title as president, 
nor receive any recognition, or acknowledgment of it, from the people over 
whom he had been elected to rule. And then when the apostles contended 
among themselves as to which one of them should be the greatest, the Saviour 
told them, Peter among the rest, that, The kings of the Gentiles exercise 
authority over them, hut it should not be so among them. Catholics ought 
certainly to be able to give a few better passages of Scripture, than these to 
prove the extraordinary power of the pope ; but according to their habit 
they are pleased to trouble themselves with neither law or examples to make 
good their pretensions, but think that the impudence of an assertion is suffi- 
cient to give authority to that which is repugnant to both Scripture and 
common sense. Or rather how comes that right, which catholics say is 
eternal and universal, to have been nipped in the bud, and so abolished 
before it could take any effect in ecclesiastical polity, as never to have been 
heard of amongst the apostles and early churches until the time much later 
when it was set up by a people who had completely apostatized from the 
faith and practice of the gospel of Christ. Hence the utmost degree of im- 
pudent madness to which perhaps any man in the world has ever arrived, is 
to assert that to be universal and perpetual, which cannot be verified by any 
one example in the New Testament plan of church polity, nor justified by 
any precept of Christ or his apostles. And if this pretended right be 
grounded upon no word or work of Christ it is to be accounted a mere silly 
invention that has nothing of truth in it. Besides, if there be a difference 
between an apostle and a pope, we are to examine who is the apostle and 
who is the pope, for the name conferred or assumed cannot make a pope 
unless he be one indeed. He who is not a pope can like Peter have no title 
to the right belonging to him who is truly and lawfully a pope. So that a 
people who find themselves menaced by a pope may oppose him with all 
their might without doing violence to any principle of law or ecclesiastical 
government. This is evidently the case when it is the true doctrine of all 
Roman Catholic popes who look upon the .Christian world to be their own 
exclusive patrimony, and for the foundation of their doctrine, assert such a 
power as cannot be limited by any law, whether human or divine. Their 
title is not to be questioned ; usurpation and fraud confer an incontestable 
right. The existence of their power is no more to be disputed than the 
manner of its acquisition, their will is a law to their subjects, and no law can 
be imposed by them upon their conduct. All of which might be expected, 
for he who reigns without law cannot be expected to obey any law. 

If the apostle Peter had been made pope by any decree of the Saviour, 



526 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUKISPEUDENCE ; 

he would have had the sovereign authority in his hands, and power sufficient 
for the execution of his office. The other apostles and evangelists, living 
and laboring with him in the propagation of the gospel and laying the 
foundations of the church of Christ, could not be guilty of excess in carry- 
ing the power and veneration, due to their ecclesiastical dictator, to the 
highest. On the other hand, not one of them ever alluded to this apostle 
in the sense of a ruler, but all labored together upon perfect terms of equal- 
ity, and paid Peter the same respect and courtesy, and no more, than was 
due to others. Peter himself, when thoroughly convinced of the demise and 
departure of the Saviour, concluded that he would return to his old occupa- 
tion — that of a fisherman — and so expressed himself. They did not give to 
him a magnificent title nor use submissive language in speaking of that one 
whom Christ had set up to be the head of the church on earth. We hear 
nothing of majesty, highness, holiness, eminence, serenity, or excellence 
being appropriated to him. None of them who were contemporary with 
him ever used those mighty titles in speaking of him, nor took upon them- 
selves the names of subjects or servants as people who live under an earthly 
ruler. They most naturally delighted to lavish every endearing name and 
title upon the Saviour, as courtiers never speak more truly than when they 
most exalt their masters and rulers, and give to them the titles that befet ex- 
press their love and admiration for them. From private usage they pass 
into public acts. ~ But not a word of this do we see in the Scriptures, which 
might give us some clue as to whether Peter's contemporaries took him to be 
a ruler over them or the churches. He certainly was not a pope if he neither 
acted as such nor the disciples received him as pope. He did act as an 
apostle and was gladly received as such. A pope without a popedom is an 
absurdity. But had Peter been made a pope he would have doubtless acted 
as such, and would in that capacity have been sovereign of the whole church. 
Whatever the sovereign power may perform at one time, it may modify or 
revoke at another. There is no check in the government to prevent it. In 
those instances in which it is vested in an individual, or a few, the govern- 
ment and the sovereignty are the same. They are held by the same power 
or persons. The sovereign or ruler constitutes the government, and it is im- 
possible to separate it from him without a revolution. Create a body in 
such a government with authority to make laws, without reference to the 
party from whom it is derived, and the government is changed. Such agents 
must be the instruments of those who appoint them, and their acts be oblig- 
atory only after they are seen and approved by their master, or the govern- 
ment is no more. 

Hence he is not a pope dejure nor one de facto, who calls himself so, but 
he who is made such by the law of the gospel assumes the duties of his office 
and the people over whom he is to rule, had in themselves the power of re- 
ceiving and authorizing his acts as such, and did so receive and authorize 
his acts. If Peter did not fill such an office, and the early disciples were 
not called upon to receive and recognize him as pope, it would be impossible 
for any man, two or three hundred years afterwards, to acquire the office, 



527 

or for the people to confer it upon him, and to give authority to the acts of 
one who neither was or could be a pope, which could belong only to him 
who had the right inherent in himself and inseparable from him, for the 
essence of a pope consists in the validity of the law, which makes him to 
be what he pretends to be. If these things are wanting, he is neither, in 
truth or right, a pope, but a lawless impostor and usurper. Nevertheless, if 
Christ had conferred this power upon Peter, and he had acted as pope, and 
if he had been received by the disciples and placed in the papal chair, he 
would have become a true pope de jure. His acts would have been valid 
in law, and all Christians would know what reverence and obedience was 
due to his office and his successors. No man can have a power over the 
church otherwise than dejure or de facto. He who pretends to have power 
of right, must prove that it is originally inherent in him or his predecessors 
from whom he inherits, or that it was justly acquired by him. The vanity 
of any pretence to an original right appears sufficiently, I hope, from the 
proofs already given, that Peter or any other apostle had it not; or, if they 
had, none of them ever pretended to exercise it, and no man could inherit 
such a right, there being no man able to make good the genealogy that 
should give him a right to the succession. Likewise, we should know from 
the same law how and whom to choose as his successor, for they who have 
the power of making a pope may, by law, make a pope as well as any other 
minister, and thus we could make him to be a legal pope whom we acknow- 
ledge to be a genuine pope. The obedience due to such a man from private 
men is grounded upon and measured by the law of the gospel ; and that 
law regarding the welfare of the churches cannot set up the interest of one 
or a few men against the whole Christian world. The whole body, there- 
fore, of the disciples of Christ, cannot be tied to any other obedience than is 
consistent with the law of the gospel according to their own judgment. 
And Baptists never having been subdued or brought into such a church and 
into fellowship with them, cannot be said to have come out of such a body 
and hence, in that sense, are not to be considered protestants. 

As ecclesiastical laws are made to keep things in order without the neces- 
sity of force, it would be a dangerous extravagance to build up a huge estab- 
lishment — a universal church government — and arm the head of that church 
who probably in a very short time must be opposed by force even to the 
taking up arms against him to preserve our liberties both religious and po- 
litical, as history gives us abundant examples. No man knows what men 
will be and become, especially if they come to the exercise of ecclesiastical 
power under a raistaken idea of a divine apostolic succession, it is reason- 
able to fear they will become evil, and consequently it is necessary to limit 
their power, that a whole universal church may not be destroyed which they 
ouglit to preserve. For he that is above the law cannot be expected to rule 
by the law. Taking the history of the past we are not assured that popes 
are so good. Goodness is always accompanied with wisdom and Christian 
tolerance arid forbearance, and we do not find those admirable qualities gen- 
erally entailed upon Catholic popes. Christ the great head of the church 



528 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

foresaw tlie evil that is hid in man's heart, especially when put in high 
places and clothed with all power. Hence he built no universal church for 
government, but instituted the free and independent churches, dividing up 
ecclesiastical power and scattering it broadcast over the land, in order to 
curb the pride and ambition of his ministers, preventing them from bring- 
ing destruction upon his kiugdom and cause upon earth, knowing that the 
best of men are so subject to vices and passions that they stand in need of 
some restraint in every condition, but most especially when they are in 
power. The rage of a private man may be pernicious to one or a few of his 
neighbors ; but the fury of a maddened ecclesiastic would drive a whole 
church into ruin. But for the fact that God in his providence has ex- 
empted Baptists from those fearful temptations they might be as bad as 
others. The great mass of men make better servants than masters, and 
these very men who have lived modestly when they had little power have 
often proved the most oppressive of all men when they were clothed with a 
little brief authority ; when they thought nothing able to resist their will. 

Power, especially ecclesiastical power, is a snare to any man ; so that they 
who in a low condition might ha,ve passed their days in innocence, when 
advanced to the highest have often become puffed up with pride and arro- 
gance. . And they who advanced such men to these high places are like 
them. The apostles called by Christ and installed into their high offices are 
worthy exceptions to this rule, especially Peter, the first pope according to 
Catholic theology. He was the most humble and modest of all men ; he 
never raised his heart above his brethren, and admonished earthly rulers to 
live in the same modesty. He never desired that the early Christians should 
depend upon his will. In giving laws to them he fulfilled the will of Christ, 
not his own, and those laws were not the signification of his will, but the 
will of Christ. He was not proud and insolent, not pleased with that osten- 
tatious pomp which Catholics call wMJesty, eminence and the like ; and who- 
soever so far exalts and magnifies the power of Peter to make the whole 
Christian world depend upon the will of his pretended successors, blas- 
phemes the name of that humble apostle which every wise and good man 
ought to revere, and whosoever with an impious fury endeavors to set up an 
earthly ecclesiastical government to be ruled over by his pretended succes- 
sors is guilty of high treason against the true government of Christ. And 
as the safety and stability of all ecclesiastical polity consists in rightly plac- 
ing and measuring the power of the ministry, such have been found to pros- 
per that have given to those from whom usurpations were least to be feared, 
who have been least subject to be corrupted ; and who having the greatest 
interest in the churches are most concerned in preserving their independence 
and welfare. This is the greatest trust that Christ ever reposed in man. 
Baptists have kept it faithfully, although to do this has cost them a vast 
amount of the most generous blood that ever flowed from martyrs' veins. 

Grant for the sake of argument that the apostle Peter was the first pope 
under Christ's immediate appointment. Peter could not devolve this title to 
those who were to succeed him. He could not pretend to be a pope, or have 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 529 

any other right than what was conferred upon him by Christ, and conse- 
quently whatever is inherited from him can have no other original, for that 
is the gift of Christ which was bestowed upon Peter, as if it had been by a 
peculiar act given to him alone. It is hard to tell who Christ intended 
should be Peter's successor, much less how he should be chosen, and by 
whom. Under the Jewish economy it was known who was to be high priest 
and how he was to be designated, and likewise what his specific duties were. 
For though it were granted contrary to fact that the pastors of the church 
at Rome were to inherit this great oiSce, Catholics must first prove that 
Peter was the first pastor at Rome, and the succession must forever be con- 
fined to that line of ministers, otherwise the succession fails. They must also 
prove that Peter was once in Rome, and that he received his right from this 
circumstance, or he could have none at all, and all of his successors have 
been under the same conditions. If it be said that the papal power with 
which Christ invested Peter entitled his successors to the right of ecclesias- 
tical rule over the wdiole Christian world, there must be some intelligent rule 
]aid down by the donor of the right by which to know who should be chosen, 
and how he should be chosen, otherwise there might arise an honest difference 
of opinion as to who should be installed into the office. Is it possible that 
Christ would create this great office and not lay down the semblance of a 
rule directly or indirectly, by example or otherwise, how or by whom it should 
be filled ? Suppose the Constitution of the United States should create the 
office of President and mention not a word as to how this chief magistrate 
should be chosen and by whom. Or suppose that the framers of the Con- 
stitution should say that Washington should be the first President. Pie 
might have filled this office during his natural life, and at his death the office 
would lapse, or cease to be, and without an amendment to the Constitution 
the office could never be revived. That which is expired, is as if it had never 
been. Was not this pretended papal power granted to Peter forfeited ? and 
no man can forfeit anything to one who can justly demand nothing. All 
the apostles who were equal with Peter in authority could not join in trans- 
mitting to him the supremacy, much less Peter could not transmit the for- 
feitu]-e. This power, therefore, never having been exercised by the apostle 
Peter, and not being transmitted, it perished as if it had never been, and no 
man can claim anything from it. There is also involved in this transaction 
the right of disposing of the government of the churches which must be in 
them, or he or they who receive it can have none. This cannot be, for the 
grand charter of church government was not from them, but from Christ. 

If this be most ridiculous and absurd, it is certain that the name and office 
of pope, cardinal, or bishop, or the like does not confer any determined 
rights upon those who have them, but every one has a right to that which 
is allotted to him by the laws of the gospel by which he is created, and the 
rights due unto, as well as the duties incumbent upon every officer of the 
church of Christ, are to be determined by the laws of the gospel itself, all 
being equally regulated by them. In other words, the law that gives and 
measures the power prescribes intelligent rules how it should be transmitted. 
34 



530 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDEITCE ; 

If this utter want of all law and rule by which to know how and who shall 
be entitled to the papacy, and if it does not destroy all the pretences of all 
who lay claim to the right, I think it will be hard to find a lawful pope, 
cardinal, or bishop, in the world, or to prove that there ever have been any. 
For the first came in by usurpation and those who have held these offices 
everywhere since owe their exaltation to usurpation and fraudulent pretences. 
Then are not all the solemnities, pomp and splendor attending the instalment 
of these high church dignitaries into these offices foolish and impertinent 
and profane, and impious and sacrilegious, if there be neither laws, nor acts, 
nor deeds by which the right of dominion, is or can be conferred upon them ? 
But our Catholic friends say that the cardinals make the pope, but we say 
that the power that makes the cardinals is no more lawful or defensible than 
that which made the pope. It is indeed a poor and contemptible system of 
church polity which will permit the pope to make the cardinals and in turn 
to make the pope. That certainly is a government in a circle not one 
example of which can be seen in the Scriptures. What could be more 
wickedly rebellious and superstitious than to say that a college of cardinals, 
officers, not known to the apostles nor to the churches, could elect a pope 
and how the lot could have fallen on Peter's successor forever throughout all 
time ? and how by that means he could inherit a power that Peter never had, 
or at least never exercised ? Who elected the first cardinals, and who 
invested them above all others with this supreme power to choose the ruler 
of the church ? They were not cardinals before they were appointed and 
some covenants entered into defining their powers and duties. Were the 
cardinals made such by the pope, or was the pope made so by the cardinals? 
These are problems past finding out by common mortals which Catholics 
perfectly understand, but cannot explain intelligently. 

If indeed the pope be a pope, if there be such a creature outside of a mad 
dream, it becomes our duty to render a passive as well as an active obedi- 
ence to him, for he who will not do what his master commands ought to 
suffer the punishment he inflicts. If the master has a right to command 
there is a duty incumbent on the servant to obey. He who suffers for not 
doing what he ought to do, draws upon himself both the guilt and the 
punishment but certainly no one ought to suffer for that which he ought 
not to do, because he who pretends to command, has not so far an authority. 
For if Christians ought to obey the pope rather than God, as Catholics have 
ever taught, they sin in disobeying, and that guilt cannot be expatiated 
by their suffering. If it be thought that this is not a practical question, in 
this the latter part of the nineteenth century, and that I carry this conten- 
tion to an undue extremity, the limits ought to be demonstrated, by wdiich 
it may, appear that I exceed them, for the nature of the care cannot be 
altered. It is true that the Inquisition is not now raging, but the storm is 
only lulled for a season and it may burst upon the world again with all its 
fury. If the power can be given to a man, at his pleasure, to annul the laws 
of God, the apostles ought not to have preached, when they were forbidden 
by the powers to which they were subject. The tortures and deaths they 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 531 

suffered, for not obeying that command, were of their own seeting, and their 
blood was upon their own heads. And if the same spirit does not animate 
the Christians of this day, a period may yet be put to religious liberty in 
this fair land and country. We have no other way of distinguishing between 
a free church and a free gospel, and such as are not so, than that the free are 
governed by themselves and by laws and ministers according to their own 
minds, and that of others who have either unwittingly subjected themselves, 
or are by force brought under the power and dominion of one or more eccle- 
siastics, to be ruled according to his, or their own pleasure. He is a free 
Christian man who lives as best pleases himself, under the laws of the gospel 
of Christ, and such rules as are made by his own consent, and the name of 
a religious subject can belong to no man, unless to him who is either born 
in the church of a man who calls himself a pope, or willingly crosses his 
hands to be manacled. 

Thus are Baptists said to be free in opposition to Catholics and all others 
ruled by one man, or many, under the dominion of what is called the uni- 
versal church. Grapes do not spring from thistles nor figs from thorns. If 
God has not therefore ordered that thistles and thorns should produce grapes 
and figs neither can we expect that the sacred affairs of the church of Christ 
when put into the hands of the worst of men should answer the ends of its 
creation. And if men can be guilty of so great an absurdity as to trust the 
weakest and worst with a power which usually subverts the wisdom and 
virtue of the best, a system of church government founded upon the rule of 
one man cannot be grounded upon the ordinance of Christ nor the institu- 
tion of man. If any such thing had been established by the apostles, the 
utter impossibility of attaining what they expected from it, must wholly have 
abrogated the establishment itself. Or rather, it would have been void from 
the beginning, because it was not, as Blackstone says, " a rule of action pre- 
scribing what is right, and prohibiting what is wrong," but a foolish and 
perverse rule setting up the unruly appetites of one person to the subversion 
of all that is good in ecclesiastical government, and subjecting the most pious 
and best of men to be destroyed by the most wicked and vicious. These 
being the effects of the unlimited power and prerogative of a pope, which 
Catholics say was duly instituted by Christ ibr the good and defense of 
Christianity, it must necessarily fall to the ground unless subjection, destruc- 
tion and dissolution tend to the preservation of religious liberty, and are to 
be preferred before spiritual strength, security and happiness. If the best 
interests of the cause of Christ are to be subserved and advanced, the ends 
of church government are accomplished and those who rule churches must 
be contented with such a proportion of glory and majesty as is consistent 
with the teachings of Christ, since the ministry is not instituted, nor any 
person placed in it, for the increase of his majesty, but for the good of the 
church, and the defense of religious liberty, which Christ came upon earth 
to establish and maintain. 

If, then, Peter was not the first pope, I desire to know whether the name 
and power belongs to all the other popes, to whose descent Catholics owe 



632 A TKEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

veneration? I cannot see the possibility of fixing the guilt of usurpation 
upon the apostle Peter, for he never claimed or exercised the office of pope. 
If his title to the papacy was not good because it never was conferred upon 
him, or if the office lapsed, or died from non-use, that of those who claim 
under him is by the same reason overthrown, for he could not be considered 
the predecessor of any of them, for no man can succeed to that which does 
not exist or go before. The ecclesiastic who has no role has no duties. As 
a successor must have a predecessor, otherwise he inherits or succeeds to noth- 
iog. This fundamental defect could never be repaired ; for successors could 
inherit no more than the right of Peter, the first, which was nothing. What 
right soever Peter had, mu&t necessarily perish with him, for it is not even 
contended by Catholics that Peter had an immediate successor, no, not for 
over two hundred years after his death. The authority of a true minister 
of the gospel, as soon as it is established by his call, election and ordination, 
is as legal and just as that of a pretended line and succession of ministers 
which may be said to have continued since the days of the apostles. For 
as time can make nothing lawful or just, that is not so of itself, that which 
a local church does establish rightfully for their own good, is of as much 
force and efficacy the first day as continuance can ever give to it. And, 
therefore, in matters of the greatest importance, Baptists do not so 'much 
inquire what ought to be, as what is good and has been, for that which of 
itself is unscriptural and evil, by continuance is made worse, and upon the 
first opportunity is justly to be abolished. And nothing can be alleged to 
color the business but a dispensation of the next pope set up after Peter's 
death, bridging over the hiatus, as all defects, either in government or 
morals, can be cured by a dispensation of his holiness and pre-eminence, the 
pope of Rome, it matters not how absurd it may be. And no one part uf 
the succession has remained entire and uniform, for the world has witnessed 
the ridiculous spectacle of two popes occupying the same papal chair at the 
same time, as well as other absurd and ridiculous irregularities equally as 
flagrant. If the office of a pope has a right in itself, some one should have 
succeeded Peter immediately after his death, which Catholics do not pretend, 
or, at least, cannot prove ; thereby acknowledging that the papal succession 
is a myth and a fraud, unless usurpation can give a right. 

He who pretends to have a power by a divine right, must first prove that 
it is originally inherent in him or his predecessors whom he succeeds, and 
from whom he inherits ; or that it was justly acquired by him. The vanity 
of any pretense to an original divine right to rule the church by a pope, 
appears sufficiently from the proofs already given, that Peter, the apostle, 
had it not ; or, if he had, no man could now inherit the same, there being a 
hiatus in the office of many years, and no man being able to make good the 
ministerial genealogy that should give him a right to the succession. Who 
can doubt but that an ecc-esiabtical kingdom so gotten may escheat for want 
of an heir? But then there is no need of seeking an heir, if usurpation can 
confer a right, and that he who gets the power into his hands ought to be 
reputed the heir of the first progenitor. The facility we have of proving 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 533 

the acts and doings of the early beginnings of the churches, makes it absurd 
for any man to pretend a perpetual right of dominion over them. The pope 
of Rome can no more be said to have the right originally in and from Peter, 
the apostle, than an elective officer can claira a right before his election and 
installation ; and, having no other at the beginning, the nature of it must 
refer to the beginning, or original, and cannot be changed by time. What- 
ever proceeds not from the law of the gospel, must be de facto only — that is, 
void of all right. We really come to the conclusion that there being no 
Scriptural authority for the papacy, that the first pope elevated himself to 
his office from natural instinct, which is only an irrational appetite, attrib- 
uted to animals that know not why they do anything, and is to be followed 
only by those men who have the misfortune, through defect of education and 
training, to be equally stupid. 

Therefore, ought not all well-meaning Christian people, who have joined 
themselves to these hierarchical forms of church government, to turn away 
from them and return to the integrity of first principles? For as time can 
make nothing lawful or just, that is not so, of and in itself, and was not so 
in the beginning, that which God's people has rightly established for their 
own good, in strict conformity to original models, is of as much force now 
as when first instituted. And then in matters of such deep interest and 
great importance, Baptists, as wise and good men, have ever inquired as to 
what has been, more than as to what ought to be. For that which of itself 
is evil and unscriptural by continuance, is made worse, and on the first 
opportunity ought to be abandoned or abolished. 

Church order certainly consists in appointing to every one his right place 
and work in ecclesiastical government ; but the Catholic theory lays the 
whole weight of the government upon one person, who very often, yea oftener 
than otherwise, neither deserves, nor is able to bear the least part of it. 
Church order requires that the best, wisest and most spiritually minded men 
should be placed in ministerial offices, where wisdom and virtue are requisite. 
If common sense did not teach this we might learn it from Scripture. But 
if the Catholic theory be true, order requires that the business of ruling the 
whole church of Christ should be committed to one man, though he might 
be the weakest or the basest of men. While the will of such a man under 
such a system passes for law, the power usually falls into the hands of such 
as are most bold and violent, and the utmost security that any man could 
have for his life or liberty depends upon his temper. Indeed, the history of 
the world abundantly shows that in times past kings and princes them- 
selves, whether good or bad, hacl no longer leases of their offices or lives, 
than a furious and fanatical pope would give them. If Christians were not 
esteemed orthodox, according to the standards they had erected, they were 
persecuted with as much asperity as the pagans had done or as the Turks 
are now persecuting the Christian Armenians, and, indeed, showed them- 
selves more fierce against the professors of Christianity than they who had 
never had any knowledge of it. The world was torn in pieces by them, and 
oftener sufiered as great miseries and persecutions by their sloth and ignor- 



534 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

ance as by their fury and madness, until nations and principalities were 
totally dissolved and lost ; whereas if Christ had set up such a government 
and guided him whom he had placed at its head it would doubtless have 
enjoyed that order and stability that always accompanies his true churches 
and people. 

There is no intelligent student of ecclesiastical history but will confess that 
the interests of popes and cardinals were more to be considered by those who 
had any private or pubhc business to treat at court than the opinions and 
wishes of kings themselves. There is no king's reign but will furnish abund- 
ant proof of what is here asserted, especially in those times when Catholi- 
cism was in league with the State. But if all this corruption and the evil 
effects of it began with Roman Catholicism it also expired with the temporal 
rule of that church. Mankind is inclined to vice, and the way to virtue is 
so hard that it wants encouragement ; but when all honors, advantages and 
preferments are given to vice, and when despised virtue finds no other re- 
ward than hatred, persecution and death, there are few who will seek and 
follow it. An unlimited and a lawless pope might be justly compared to a 
weak ship exposed to the violent storm, with a vast sail and no rudder. The 
nature of a man surrounded as a pope is so frail that wheresoever the word 
of a single man has had the force of a law innumerable extravagances and 
mischiefs it has produced have been so notorious that all true evangelical 
churches, which have any regard for the law of the gospel, have always 
abominated it, and made it their principal care to find out remedies against 
it, by so dividing and balancing the powers of their government that one or 
a few men might not be able to dominate and lord it over those they ought 
to preserve and protect. These considerations have given growth and 
strength to Baptist church government and all others that are built upon 
rational foundations. Though we should grant that a power like to this 
church, circumscribed by the laws of the gospel, though not authorized by it, 
and kept perpetually under the supreme authority and oversight of a spiritu- 
ally minded people, may, by a well-disciplined church, be prudently granted 
to a virtuous man, but it can have no relation to a Roman Catholic pope, 
whose power is in himself, subject to no law, perpetually exercised by him- 
self, and for his own sake, whether he have or have not the abilities required 
for the due performance of so great a work. If he be not above the law he 
is no pope, and if he be not an absolute pope he is not such an one as is 
suitable and needed to stand at the head of the Catholic church whose eyes 
have never slumbered and whose uill knows no bounds. Whereas, the prac- 
tice of all the apostolic churches has been ^s directly contrary to the abso- 
lute power of one man as their constitutions ; or if the original of these con- 
stitutions lie hid in the impenetrable darkness of antiquity, their progress 
when seen in action will serve to show the intention of their founders. 

But if the papal or the episcopal forms of government are such that must 
restrain religious liberty, and subject all to the will of a pope, or to that of 
a bishop, this is as much as to say that all Christians belonging to them 
desire that which is against both the genius of the New Testament churches, 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 535 

and the law and liberty of the gospel. For as we have already proved that 
no such unnatural government was imposed upon the churches by Christ or 
his apostles, and it is no less evident that Christians being rational creatures 
nothing can be universally natural to them, that is not rational. And to 
say that all Christians desire and love religious liberty without necessary 
restraint from irresponsible rulers of the churches, and yet that they should 
enter a system of government that does restrain it, is ridiculous. But as a 
few, or many joined together, in the New Testament times and framed free 
and independent churches, regardless of the interference of popes, or bishops, 
so may we in like manner institute like forms of government, and if the ends 
of those governments are obtained, we may equally follow the voice of 
liberty in constituting them without let or hindrance. The creation of an 
universal church with some one to rule over it, which entirely extinguishes 
the local churches, must necessarily be most contrary to the law of the 
gospel, though the people were willing, for they thereby abjure their own 
libe ty wherein Christ made them free. The usurpation of those who do it 
can be no less than outrageous violators of the law of Christ. Such a people 
living in such a church under such a government are religious subjects by 
nature and education and have neither the understanding nor courage that 
is required for the constitution and management of church government 
within themselves. They can no more subsist without a pope and a priest 
than a flock without a herdsman. They have no comprehension of religious 
liberty, and can neither desire the good they do not know, nor enjoy it if 
bestowed upon them. They bear all things, and endure all things ; and 
whatever they suffer they have no other remedy, or refuge, or desire any, 
than in the mercy of religious lords, in the shape of popes, bishops and 
priests. For what end can we think governments ecclesiastical to have been 
established unless to enjoy religious liberty and freedom of conscience? Or 
how can that be called a government which suppresses and stifles Christ-given 
blessings? Or how can these privileges subsist under a church government, 
which not necessarily by corruption, but by a necessity inherent in itself, 
brings about these deplorable things ? The law of rehgious liberty and that 
of conscience must in like manner be broken, and of all ecclesiastical govern- 
ments, that of the Baptists, in which every man's liberty is least restrained 
because every man has an equal part, would certainly prove to be the most 
Scriptural, the most rational and natural, notwithstanding some very unjustly 
represent it as a perpetual spring of discord and confusion. 

He who inquires more exactly into primitive church government will find 
the law of Christ enjoins every minister as well as every man not to arrogate 
to himself more power than he allows to others, nor to usurp that liberty 
which will prove hurtful to him or the church, or to expect that others will 
suffer themselves to be restrained, whilst he, to their prejudice, remains in the 
exercise of that freedom which no law either regulates or restrains. He who 
would be exempted from this law of the gospel must show for what reason he 
should be raised above his brethren ; and if he does it not, he is a lawless 
rebel against the government of Christ. For they who unjustly and unreason- 



536 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUKCH JUEISPEUDENCE ; 

ably assume to themselves that "which agrees not with the teachings and 
examples of Christ, and set up an interest and title in themselves contrary to 
that of their equals, which they ought to defend, are wanting in fidelity to both 
God and man, and such as favor them are like to them. Even the apostles 
never sought liberty without restraint, but such as was guarded by the laws 
and teachings of Christ tending to the good of the churches, which all might 
join in promoting, and the unruly desires of those who effected and usurped 
powers which they did not deserve, and to which they had no right, might 
be repressed. Under all hierarchical forms of church polity the ministry 
have in all times endeavored to put all ecclesiastical power into the hands of 
one man, who might protect them, and advance them to fat livings and un- 
deserved honors, while under the gospel plan the best men trusting in their 
own merit, and desiring no other preferments, than what they were by their 
equals thought to deserve, and were contented with a due liberty under the 
protection of the laws of Christ. The question then presents itself to every 
reflecting mind, whether they who live under such governments, and know 
no other, do not always endeavor to advance that system, under which they 
enjoy, or may hope to obtain, the highest honors, and abhor and look down 
upon that by which they might be exposed to scorn and contempt, because 
of their mean abilities? "Which being determined, it will appear easily why 
the most worldly minded and least religious have ever been for monarchical 
forms of church government, and the best and most spiritually minded 
against them. 

Before the doctrine of the papacy can have any influence or place in a 
correct system of ecclesiastical jurisprudence, our popes are to prove that 
they are vicars of Christ and lords paramount of the Christian church by a 
lawful title, or some other equivalent to it. When that is done we shall 
know upon v/hom we have a dependence, and may consider whether we 
ought to acknowledge and submit to such a power, or give reasons for our 
refusal. But in order to do this, it is hardly worth while to search into the 
Scriptures for light upon that subject, for they are as silent as death upon 
the power of the pope. And it is in no way probable that the apostles and 
the very earhest ministers of the gospel, who had kept themselves within the 
very narrowest limits of ministerial power should sufi^er their immediate 
successors to transcend those limits to the overthrow of the system itself, 
without recording their protests against it in the Scriptures by a specific 
animadversion. But the record shows that they remained and continued 
most obstinate defenders of the freedom and equality of the ministry and 
the government of the churches which they had founded ; that each pastor 
managed his own church by himself, and acknowledged no other ministers 
and no other laws than their own. If they had made such a resignation of 
their rights, as was necessary to create a supremacy in one above another, it 
would have been enough to overthrow the whole system ; for it is not the 
ruler that gives to the people, but the people that gives to the ruler. If 
these great ministers, including Christ's apostles, had been given the author- 
ity to change this ministry and to grant to one man the power to rule over 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 537 

the whole, he that would pretend to derive a right and a benefit from thence, 
must prove the grant, otherwise it falls to the ground. 

Failure to do this also shows that there is no such thing as ministerial 
power placed in the hands of a single man by the laws of Christ, but that 
each church has it in themselves. It was not by law nor by right, but by 
usurpation and imposture that Catholics took upon themselves to pick what 
they pleased out of the Scriptures to bolster up their system. Whereas the 
early disciples contented themselves by founding the free and independent 
local churches, which they knew to be the mother and nurse of religious 
liberty, fitting them for the spread of a pure and free gospel. For a church 
to single out and elect a minister, as was done in Matthias', Barnabas' and 
Paul's cases, is a matter of good judgment and intention under the guidance 
of the Holy Spirit, but they receivod the power and authority of ministers 
from the law of the gospel. It would be in vain for a pope or a college of 
cardinals to say that they will have it otherwise ; for if there were such 
creatures known in church government, they are not created to make laws, 
but to govern according to such as are already made ; otherwise they will 
not only govern by will, but by that irregular will, which turns the law, that 
was made for the public good of the churches, to the private advantage of 
one or a few men. Thus in the early history of the churches did a sect rise 
up, and by force or fraud usurp a power of imposing what they pleased. 
Others being foolish and disloyal to Christ did so far err in the foundations, 
as to give up themselves to the will of one or a few men, who, turning all 
to their own profit, have been just in nothing, but in using such as they have 
blindly misled like dumb cattle. 

Certainly all will agree, therefore, that ecclesiastical government was not 
set up for the profit, pleasure or glory of one or of a few men, but for the 
good of -the cause of Christ. If it can be set up for the profit and aggrandize- 
ment of one, or a few men, he that is the best of men may become the worst, 
and the most holy father of the church may make himself its worst enemy, 
and hence we may conclude that in all controversies concerning the power 
of ministers, we are not to examine or consider what conduces to their profit, 
ease and glory, but what is for the good of the churches. When a minister 
has gained to himself the gracious character and title of God's, vicegerent on 
earth, and is invested with a supreme unlimited power over the church and 
people, he leaves his pernicious practices as a perpetual law to such as be- 
lieve in him to all succeeding generations, whereby the world may be exposed 
to the cruelty. and madness of the most wicked men that religious fanaticism 
could produce, that is, if we are to judge the future by the past. And if 
such men are inclined to increase that power which has no limit by adding 
fuel to the fires of religious intolerance, we may safely return to our pro- 
positions, so often adverted to herein, that God having established no such 
authority as Catholics fancy, the churches of Christ and all Christians are 
left to the use of their own liberty and judgment in setting up local churches 
and in making provision for their own welfare ; that there is no lawful min- 
istsrs over any of them but such as they have elected and ordained ; that in 



538 A TKEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPKTJDENCE ; 

creating tliem tliey do not seek tlie advantage of their ministers alone, but 
the good of the church and cause ; and having seen that an absolute power 
over a church is unscriptural and a burden that no free people could bear, 
and that no wise or good minister ever deserved it, we from thence con- 
clude that it is not just for any to effect it, though it were personally, good 
for himself, because he is not exalted to the sacred office of a minister for his 
own good, but that of the church of which he is pastor. 

Whatever ecclesiastical authority ministers had who were made such in 
the days of the apostles and by them, is inherited by every lawful minister 
now extant in the world ; and the title of pope and bishop, and the like, 
which Catholics and others so much magnify and exalt, as if it were an- 
nexed to one single person, vanishes into nothing, or else the teachings of 
Christ could have neither strength nor truth in them when he taught them 
that they were all equal in power and no one above the other. And yet if 
Christ had not declared himself so fully on this point we might easily see 
that he left his ministry in that equality from the fact that none were ever 
seen to have exercised such a prerogative. But the personal gifts and vir- 
tues, that give a reasonable preference to one more fit to govern than an- 
other, cannot be used as a reason why he should be set apart to rule unless 
Christ had so ordained, nor can be annexed to any one line or succession of 
ministers. Therefore, the Saviour cannot be presumed to have given one 
minister or his successors the government of his brethren or churches. If 
perchance one minister was elevated above another and one made head ruler 
over all, and that his commands are to be obeyed preferably to those of 
God, it were fit to know the limits of each kingdom, lest we happen pre- 
posterously to obey man when we ought to obey God, or God when we are 
to follow the commands of men. If these things be left in doubt and confu- 
sion the law of God is of no effect, and we may safely put an end to all 
thoughts about ecclesiastical government and religion, the word of God is 
nothing to us ; we are not to inquire what he has commanded, but what 
pleases our master, our most holy father, the pope, how vile, wicked or fool- 
ish soever he may be. The Baptist martyrs who died at the stake for pre- 
ferring the commands of God before those of men, fell like fools and perished 
in their sins. If every pope that has a following can thus exempt himself 
by becoming the maker and the unmaker of his own laws, the laws of God 
are at once abrogated throughout the world and everything is in chaos 
and confusion. 

What is this inflated and puffed-up power and majesty so inseparable 
from the pope of Rome, that the Christian religion canuot subsist without 
its existence ? Catholics boast of the greatness of this power. They must 
think it a glorious privilege to kill or spare whom they please. But 
such ministers as by Christ's permission were set up in the days of the 
apostles, had nothing of this power. Chuch dignitaries had no power to set 
up still greater dignitaries, nor were they to govern by their own wills, nor 
w^ere they to raise their hearts above their brethren. Here we find humble 
ministers of the gospel, without that unlimited power, who served the churches 



OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 639 

according to Christ's law, from which they might not recede under the pen- 
alty of God's everlasting displeasure. We are to esteem those true minis- 
ters of Christ who are described to be such by the Scriptures, and we give 
another name to those who endeavor to advance their own glory contrary to 
the precepts of Christ and the interest of the churches and Christianity. No 
man will deny that Christ had the right of giving power to his ministry in 
such proportions as seemed most conducive to his will and the good of the 
churches ; and if we are in doubt as to the amount of the power he did give, 
we have only to look at the power they exercised, and the question is intel- 
ligently settled. If we do this we will find no similitude between a min- 
ister made such by Christ, and a pope, made such by man. Christ must 
have had this power, and he doubtless transmitted the same to his apostles, 
K they, having all power, set up no pope, made no cardinals, and commis- 
sioned no bishops to rule over the churches, by what authority were these 
various orders of the ministry set up, and who gave them their power ? Plad 
there been a necessity for them, or any place for them in the apostolic econ- 
omy, no doubt such officers would have been duly established. It is treason 
against this sacred government to say that it matters not who set up these 
offices or how they came by their power. Once concede this, and violence 
against this government, fraud and treachery are just as lawful as the elec- 
tion and ordination of a minister under the gospel economy. Admit this, 
and it is in vain to see any virtue in the laws of the gospel, or by what rule 
we may know a lawful minister from an unlawful one, or who has a right to 
administer the ordinances of God's house, and consequently what in con- 
science we are obliged to do. 

Suppose a man were to undertake, in and of himself, to minister at the 
altar — to go into the holy of holies — contrary to the law of the priesthood 
under the Jewish economy ? How would he have been treated, and what 
would have become of him ? If this is right and Scriptural, the world has 
to this day lived in darkness, and such things as would have brought down 
a thunderbolt from God under the priesthood of Aaron, are thought to be 
the most commendable and glorious under the priesthood and rule of the pope 
of Rome. Whereas, the true disciples of Christ knew no other minister than 
he who is so by the law of the gospel, nor any power in that minister, except 
that which he has by that law. He who would measure the power of Christ's 
ministry by any other rule, and pretend to take that rule from the Scrip- 
tures, makes use of the Scriptures, as the devil does, to subvert the truth. 
But if no such grant of power be made by those who had the right, under 
Christ, to set up an ecclesiastical polity, I leave it to any sane man, whose 
understanding and manners are not entirely corrupted, to determine what 
name ought to be given to that person, and how he ought to be regarded by 
all God-fearing men who usurps a power over the church of Christ, and 
what obedience and respect the people owe to such a one. Nothing is to be 
received as a general maxim, which is not generally true ; therefore, we 
need no more to overthrow such as Catholics propose to uphold their power, 
than to prove how frequently they have been found false, and what des- 



^ 640 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE ; 

perate miscliiefs they have brought upon the world, as often as they have 
been practiced, and excessive powers put into the hands of such as had 
neither the inclination nor the ability to make a good use of them. 

One is forced to the conclusion that those who advocate and adhere to the 
doctrine of the papacy, that the church might have a pope because they did 
not have one in the beginning. But all rational men who are loyal to God's 
law require positive proofs ; superstitions and might-be' s are not to be ad- 
mitted and will not be accepted. Christ might reasonably have had a great 
veneration and regard for Peter, and doubtless did have, and whatever re- 
spect was paid him, or pre-eminence, if any, granted to him on that account 
can be of no advantage to any other minister since his death by reason of 
that fact. He had neither the name or power of a pope, and he did not 
transmit either the name or power to any man, W'hich according to Catholics 
is a right inseparable from a pope, and his power was not continued by any 
kind of succession, but his apostleship died with him as did that of the other 
apostles. When we come to the question of apostolic succession examples 
are little in favor of the doctrine. Under the Jewish economy the priest- 
hood was confined to and wrapped up in Aaron and his descendants ; but the 
apostles and the other early ministers belonged to no tribe to which the min- 
istry was promised ; they did not, nor could they transmit the power to aiiy 
particular man, or line of men, in which there could be a right inseparable 
from others, and their right was not continued by any kind of succession, 
but created occasionally and conferred upon whomsoever the Holy Spirit 
and the churches chose, as need required, -'according to the virtues discov- 
ered in those who were raised by Christ to deliver and preach the gospel. If 
the Apostle Peter had been made pope by the Saviour, and his office and 
duties specifically defined, and a provision made as to how his successors 
might be elected, that office would have succeeded to his successors, and 
those duties would have devolved upon them ; which being done, his suc- 
cessors lay hid among the rest of the ministers of the church as time and oc- 
casion might arise. Thus all the ministers of the churches of Christ chosen 
and set up, not so much by succession as by choice of the churches. These 
dignities w^ere not inherent in their persons, but conferred upon them; nor 
conferred that they might be exalted in pomp and splendor and power and 
glory, but that they might be humble ministers of the churches as the apostle 
Peter was, for their good, and not to their destruction. But I think it will 
be exceedingly hard from the life and acts of the Apostle Peter to deduce 
an argument in favor of the papacy, and such an ecclesiastical hierarchy 
as is necessary to descend to any one man, or succession of men ; and failing 
the whole fabric of Catholicism falls rashly to the ground. 

But whatever the dignity of the office of Peter was, and howsoever he was 
raised to that office, it certainly difiered from that of a pope, as we see the 
papacy in this day and time. Peter could not have refused to be pope if 
Christ had made him so, or if Christ from the beginning had appointed that 
the churches should have one. Certainly the early disciples would not have 
refused for two or three hundred years, after the death of Peter, to have 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 541 

used tlie liberty Christ gave them to make a pope to be the ruler over the 
churches. If God had brought destruction and desolation upon the Israel- 
ites for choosing a king, when he had commanded them not to have one, cer- 
tainly he would have visited the same desolation upon the early disciples 
for not having a pope to rule over them after he had so commanded them. 
But God who acknowledges those works only to be his own which proceed 
directly from his commands to his people : Israel hath cast off the thing 
that is good, the enemy shall pursue him ; they have set up kings, but not by 
me; and princes, but I know them not. Thus God sought to justify the 
severity of his judgments brought upon them by their kings, that they, not 
he, had ordained. But the Catholic world should likewise remember that 
God has also said, I gave them kings in my anger, and took them away in my 
wrath. In destroying them God brought desolation upon the people that 
had sinned in asking for them and following their example in aU kinds of 
wickedness. But if Christ established the papacy the people had not re- 
jected God, and sinned in having a pope, if the churches by a general law 
of the gospel ought to have one, or by a particular law one had been ap- 
pointed by Christ over them, nor any law of Christ, particular or general, 
according to which they ought to have one, or ever did have one, until the 
degenerate days when they turned their hearts from God and placed them 
upon the sordid things of this world. 

The Pope of Rome, whether his office be lawful or not, should govern 
according to the law of the gospel, and if he does not he degenerates into 
a tyrant. He is obliged to frame his actions according to this law or not 
be a pope, for a tyrant is not a pope, but ought to be as contrary to one as 
the worst of men is to the best. But if a pope absolves himself from the law 
of the gospel that makes him to be a pope, and if all his obligations were 
dissolved, we may easily guess to what lengths he might go ; for experience 
instructs us, that notwithstanding the strictest laws and the most rigid con- 
stitutions that men of the best intentions in the world could invent to restrain 
the irregular appetites of those in power, the excesses of some of the popes 
in the past have frequently broken out, to the utter destruction of nations 
and principalities. If these things be true, lawless men stand at the head of 
the church ! and there is no difference between a gospel minister of Christ, 
who is what he is by law, and a public enemy to Christianity, who, by force 
or fraud, sets himself up against all law, both human and divine ! and what 
was said before is true, that a pope degenerates into a tyrant, if he be not 
under the law, for the history of the world, abundantly shows that tyrants have 
also been popes ! For as religious liberty consists only in being subject to 
no man's will and nothing denotes a slave but a dependence upon the will 
of another, if there be no other law in ecclesiastical government than the 
will of a pope, there is in the world no such thing as religious freedom. 
What then does it profit a man if he has a right in the church of Christ, if 
he enjoys it only at the pleasure of another? 

It is foolish to say that a pope is obliged to follow the advice of his college 
of cardinals unless he were bound by it. This coUege must be chosen by 



542 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; 

him, or imposed upon him. If it be imposed upon him, which Catholics say 
cannot be, it must be by a power that is above him. If chosen by him who 
knows no law or is obedient to none, it is apt to be just as bad as he is, and 
it will generally come to pass, that he will take for his counsellors rather 
those who are of his ilk, and those he believes to be addicted to his person 
and interests, than such as are fitly quahfied to perform the duties of their 
places. If we take into consideration rather what is probable than possible, 
selfish and designing popes will never choose such cardinals as are good, but 
favoring those who are most like to themselves, will prefer such as second 
their humors and personal interests, and by so doing will rather fortify and 
rivet the evils and excesses that are brought upon the church through their 
defects, than cure them. If this college of cardinals be imposed upon him 
and he is obliged to follow their advice, it must be imposed by a power that 
is above him ; his will, therefore, is not the law, but must be regulated 
by the law. If so, what law ? The pope is therefore above the law, and 
if we are to beheve Catholics, he is no pope if he be not above the law, and 
has not his own will. We ought not by a preposterous conjunction confound 
the name and rights of ministers of the gospel, who are such by the law, 
with the lawless popes of the earth who are utterly against all law, and who 
by their actions declare themselves enemies, not only to all law, but to the 
best interests of the churches of our Lord Jesus Christ. This requires no 
other proof than to examine the history of Christianity from the time this 
monstrous power was set up in the world to the present time. 

It is impossible therefore to conceive of a system of ecclesiastical govern- 
ment, or a Christian ministry that is not regulated by a law. These exact 
limits are as specifically fixed as those of the priesthood under the Mosaic 
dispensation, not so much possibly by written details as by living examples 
made manifest while the apostles, who had all power given them, were yet 
living, whose business it was to regulate these great measures. Besides, the 
extent of those limits can only be known by the intentions of the apostles 
who set them up, which are so visible, that none but such as are wilfully 
blind can mistake. This latitudinarian way of construing God's word has 
given beginning, growth and continuance to all the divers kinds of ecclesias- 
tical governments now extant in the world. And as to some of them, 
notably that of the Catholics, one would think they had taken the model of 
the government they live under from the monstrous pattern of some lawless 
tyrant, where the king knows no other law than his own blind will. The 
head of this government has killed, torn in pieces, burned at the stake, im- 
paled, embowelled, beheaded, quartered, and thrown to the dogs whomsoever 
would dare think for himself, and few obtained the favor of being put to death 
or thrown to the vultures without bodily torments prior to death. The 
subjects of this pretended successor to Peter approach him, licking the dust, 
and not otherwise than on their knees, and crave the most gracious privi- 
lege of kissing his big toe. 

Yet lest it should be thought that Baptists are a non-progressive people, 
and averse to any changes from the somewhat crude system of apostolic 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 643 

church government, I will say that the wisdom of man is imperfect, and un- 
able to foresee the effects that may proceed from an infinite variety of con- 
ditions and circumstances in church government, which, according to 
emergencies, necessarily require new rules and regulations to prevent or cure 
the mischiefs arising from them, or advance a good that should last forever, 
and the next thing was to evolve laws to prevent exigences, as much as in 
their power lay. And we who have followed those early Christians, who 
laid these foundations, should we persist absolutely in the way they first 
entered upon, or blame those too severely who go out of that in which their 
fathers had walked when they find it necessary, renders the worst of incon- 
veniences and defects perpetual ? Changes are, therefore, sometimes neces- 
sary and unavoidable. But as their are universal rules in physics, archi- 
tecture and military affairs, from which men ought never to depart, so there 
are some in ecclesiastical government, also, which ought to be observed. 
And wise administrators of church government, adhering to them only, will 
be ready to change all minor rules as occasion may require, in order to the 
good of the cause. This we may learn from studying the history of the 
apostolic churches and the fundamental law given to them, having its root 
in Christ, is subject to no change ; but, nevertheless, the churches were left 
the liberty of doing many things not done by those early churches, as lonh 
as they kept the foundations sure and steadfast; and the mischiefs tge 
churches afterwards suffered proceeded not simply from changing, but chang- 
ing unlawfully and for the worse, and that to the utter destruction of the 
fundamental principles which Christ designed should be stable and im- 
movable. They who aim at the good of the churches, and wisely institute 
means adequate to the attainment of it, deserve praise ; and those only are 
to be blamed and censured who either foolishly or maliciously set up a cor- 
rupt private interest in one or a few men contrary to all law and precedent. 
We reasonably infer, then, that when these principleB began to govern 
and to actuate changes in ecclesiastical governments, all foundations were 
utterly subverted and overthrown ; evil designs, tending only to the advance- 
ment of private interests, were carried on by means as wicked as the end to 
which they drifted, until now one can see no resemblance between these 
huge empirial governments and the plain simple forms laid down in the 
Scriptures, Hence, Baptists have ever held that while the foundation princi- 
ples remain identically the same, the superstructure may be changed and modi- 
fied according to the necessities of the case, without prejudice to the churches. 
This being the case, we may easily determine that both of these kinds of 
government are subject to changes and discords, but with this difference, 
that all absohite papal and episcopal forms are, by principle, led to it. 
Whereas, Baptist church government being popular and free, is only in a 
possibility of falling into it. As the first cannot subsist, unless the prevail- 
ing part of their people be either ignorant or evilly disposed, the other 
mu«t deteriorate and cannot prosper, unless they be virtuous, intelligent and 
spiritually minded. And I doubt whether any better reason can be given 
why there are more Catholics and Episcopalians in the world and more 



544 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE J 

belonging to these kinds of church government, than that those people are 
more easily drawn into a proud, showy and pompous establishment than to 
those defended from them ; and that these monarchical forms can be said 
to be natural in no other sense than that men's restless and rebellious 
natures are most inclined to that which is worst. Which is sufficient to show 
that a people acting according to their own will, under the laws and rules of 
the gospel alone, never advance unworthy men to the ministry, unless it be 
by mistake ; whereas the pope and his satellites always prefer those who will 
yield a blind obedince to his will; which state of affairs cannot subsist unless 
the prevailing part of their people be either ignorant, or base and vicious. 

This is a true pattern of the Catholics' patriarchal monarch, and most holy 
father and vicegerent of Christ ! His majesty is most exalted, for he does 
whatever he pleases. His powerful word is law, and his law is the rule of 
action. The exercise of his power is as gentle and pacific as can be reason- 
ably expected from one who has all he has by the unquestionable right of 
usurpation, and those who follow his blind will are kept in such ignorance 
and weakness as neither to know how to govern themselves, or dare to resist 
him. Let there be raised up a people who are so ignorant and superstitious 
as to believe that the word of a poor weak human being can be substituted 
for the word of God as the infallible law of the church, and the whole 
nefarious business is done. The machinations of this overgrown ecclesiastical 
pandemonium have been so ingeniously contrived, that the sacred word of 
God, which we and our predecessors have so highly valued has been by them 
abolished or made a snare to all those who dare to think and act for them- 
selves, and are guilty of the unpardonable crime of adhering to the apostolic 
plan of church government, or have the courage and intelligence to defend 
it. 'No wonder that Baptist principles never flourished to any great extent 
in the dark ages under a religious monarch who believed that the kingdom 
of God on earth w^as his patrimony, that his will was law, and that he had 
power which none may resist. If any doubt whether he made a good use of 
it, he has only to examine history both sacred and profane as to what has 
been done in all places where they have had power and full sway. Oh ! but 
the Catholic principles and religion are so full of meekness and charity ! 
The popes of the earth have always shown themselves so gentle and forgiving 
towards those who would not submit to their authority ! ! The Jesuits, for 
instance, who may be considered the very soul of that system, are so good 
natured, so tolerant, faithful and exact in their morals, so full of innocence, jus- 
tice and truth ; no violence is to be feared by those who dare think otherwise 
than they do ! ! ! The fatherly care they have always shown to Baptists — the 
re-baptizers — in the past commends itself to the Christian w^orld as becomes a 
good father ! ! ! ! In a word, the exceeding abundant sweetness, mellowness, and 
apostolical holiness, and meekness of this universal church as we see it now in 
this enlightened Christian age, sufficiently convinces us that nothing is to be 
feared when this benign principle reigns ! ! ! ! ! May the good Lord deliver 
his people from the dominion and domination of one man, or many, whose y 
will is law and keep them free in that liberty wherein he has made them free! 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 545 

Were I to vindicate the right to make a pope, this should be my argu- 
ment. AVhen our Saviour came upon earth and established the Christian 
religion, the evil one became alarmed that his kingdom was in danger, and 
casting about as to how he might put a lasting obstacle in the way of the 
spread of Christianity, raised up a pope, put a temporal sword in his hand, 
and clothed him with all the power of an earthly king. But a large part 
of the Christian world, being averse to a pope, because they could not suffer 
any man to enjoy such power; these would not have a pope for the 
reason they could not bear his manners. For though a pope is really but a 
temporal king in disguise, nevertheless, he possesses all the outward appear- 
ance of sanctimoniousness and piety, while his real life is a kind of imitation 
of the pomp and splendor of a foreign monarch ; and it being necessary for 
a pope to have subjects, to do him worship, reverence and honor, a people 
must be set apart, to bow down before him to worship his person and to 
kiss his foot. And as the customs of an enslaved people are a part of 
their servitude, and those of a free people part of their liberty, it is hardly 
to be believed that God, who is a good and wise being, should subject all 
men to the dominion of a pope, but being desirous to know whether there be 
any in the world, so true and faithful, as not thus to bow down at the feet of 
such a creature, though all be put to death mercilessly who refuse so to do. 
It is impossible for us to suppose this benign creature to be a man with the 
common instincts of humanity, because allowing him to be such a man, a 
suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not human beings, and especi- 
ally Christians. Therefore it is highly necessary to have a pope ! Or if 
this argument be a httle illogical and disjoined, I would say : That a pope 
must be a non-existing being ; for to conceive of a pope as having his com- 
mencement in the law of the gospel is impossible. Nothing can be produced 
from nothing ; if a pope can become a pope without law or gospel, then does a 
pope become something out of nothing ; for he was nothing before he was made 
a pope, and he is nothing now. Whence, therefore, was a pope produced ? 
From himself? No ; for then he must have already been in existence to be 
able to produce himself, otherwise he would have been produced from nothing. 
Hence the primary law. A pope is non-existing, and if non-existing, conse- 
quently, he is a Scriptural nonentity, and a misnomer ! Nothing is nothing. 

We conclude therefore that the rights of high church dignitaries, whether 
they be popes, cardinals, bishops or priests, are grounded upon usurpation. 
The religious liberties of the true disciples of Christ do not arise from such 
sources. The allegiance and obedience they are under binds no man to more 
than the law of the gospel directs. Baptists have been, under the blessings 
of God, kept within the limits of that law by the virtue and power of a 
great and loyal Christian nobility, not coming down from a line of popes, 
cardinals or bishops, but from Christ, the King of kings. They have never 
suffered themselves to be moved by the stupenduous changes wiiich in the 
process of time were insensibly introduced to undermine the superstructure 
which Christ had established for his own churches. Like Paul they have 
kept the faith, being filled with the spirit like to that which animated their 
35 



546 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; 

early ancestors, they have endeavored to deserve the great honors achieved, 
by remaining faithful to the trust committed to their keeping. If we will 
remain true to our predecessors, it will become us as faithful stewards to 
preserve what we know they intended, and by new efforts, and new lights 
to repair any breaches we may have made in the law of the churches. 
Having the same spirit they had, we may easily preserve our ecclesiastical 
liberties, and hand down to posterity a free church and a free gospel. 
Failing, the fault will be among ourselves, and not to any virtue 
and wisdom in our opponents. We have noted those principles here 
in order that they might serve as a contrast to post-apostolic systems. 
The Baptist idea of church polity, as it is in a great many other directions, 
is simply the pure, sound Bible idea. These ideas are nowhere so prevalent 
as they are seen in Baptist church government. Those who live in other 
systems are prone to speak of the Baptists as slow, of their members as anti- 
quated and non-progressive. Tliey like to think of Baptists as behind the times. 

Should seemingly harsh things be said herein against the papal ministry 
it is not intended as a reflection upon the true ministers of Christ. And 
should it be said that the papal ministry is not evil in itself and that it is 
law-abiding and peaceful, and neither the people nor the government need 
have any fear of it. I have only to point to the history of Christianity in 
the past ages as an evidence of what they might do in the future. Oh ! the 
blood, the innocent blood, that has been shed in the name of Christ and 
Christianity ! Is the corruption of this church and its evil designs so little 
known that such as have common sense should expect justice and mercy from 
those who fear no punishment if they repeat the crimes of the past ? or that 
the modesty, integrity and innocence which are seldom found in one man, 
although he should profess to be Christ's vicegerent on earth can be found 
in a church which designs no less than the conquest of the whole earth ? For 
the rule of this church is that all men are to be guided by the church, and 
none to be separated from it under pain of damnation. We cannot suppose 
that goodness and mercy could be constantly found in all those who by any 
means attain the chief magistracy of this power, and that it would continue 
forever in their successors, or that there can be any security or religious 
liberty under that form of church government. No amount of Christian 
valor could defend one against religious fanaticism and intolerance if the 
malice of a mighty church establishment be upheld by public secular power. 
There must, therefore, be a way and a right of proceeding lawfully and 
judicially against all persons who band themselves together even under the 
sacred name of a church to transgress the laws of religious liberty or else 
those laws, and the true churches of Christ that should subsist by them, can- 
not stand, and, indeed, in the dark ages of the world never did stand, and 
the ends for which the government of the churches of Christ were constituted, 
together with the churches themselves, must be overthrown. 

But no truer words can be uttered than those which say that if we will 
find tlie true principles of apostolic church government now extant in the 
world, where men and women are loyal to the truth, as it is in the gospel, 



OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 547 

where a people professing Christianity in its primitive purity who are guided 
in their precepts and practices by a spiritually wholesome sentiment, where 
a people Hve religiously, practiciug the ordinances of Christ in their purity, 
and wliere the best of customs and usages are lived every day and perpetu- 
ated, where hearts beat to the most loyal sentiments, and where the people 
can be trusted to uphold what is highest and most lasting in church govern- 
ment and Christian life, we must turn to the Baptists of the United States. 

What is the best and most convenient system of church government, and 
the best form for the ministry to labor in, does not trouble Baptists. Their 
respect, honor and reverence for the plan laid down in the Scriptures is too 
deep-rooted to question its sacredness. Baptists do not question the divine 
laws ; they accept and perpetuate them. Intellectual and spiritual progress 
go hand in hand with a strict adherence to the accepted belief in the word 
of God. Their theological seminaries do not put a strained construction 
upon the Scriptures to conform to " new oracles not well inspired," but 
place them in the hands of their young ministry as God delivered them. 
They believe in progress along conservative, healthy, rational lines. Vague 
theories in theology or polity which upset and overthrow find no sympathy 
with them. They are content to move slowly, but surely, and some day 
when the vast majority of others who have flocked to the gaudy and showy 
establishments, get through worshipping high church dignitaries and drop 
their boastful manners, their eyes will turn towards the Baptists — a people 
loyal to the truth, worshipful, progressive, earnest and courageous. 

Every candid Baptist who has steadily followed the discussion of this 
subject, who has resolutely gone over the whole ground, and studied the 
history and true nature of the apostolic churches, and who is fairly acquainted 
with Baptist church literature, will agree, I trust, that the true idea of the 
churches of Christ has here been correctly stated. Possibly some of my 
readers may not at once perceive the whole import of the principles herein 
treated of, and some may not agree with me in everything, but let them study 
this subject in the light of the primitive churches, and their practices, and 
their own observations will not fail to furnish them with commentaries and 
full explanations of the preceding pages. I flatter myself, at least, that 
the fundamental principles herein laid down are sound and Scriptural. And 
now in taking my final leave of my readers let me kindly admonish them, 
as they love the truth and the churches of the living God, to adhere to the 
Baptist faith and practice as it conforms to the teachings of his word, to 
cherish and venerate the history of the denomination, to cling to that which 
exists, to maintain, to preserve, to contend for the necessary stability of the 
churches, without which true church government will perish from the earth, 
being assured that if these bulwarks of Bible church government are once 
demolished, the whole denomination will soon be flooded by an irresistible 
tide of arbitrary power and misrule. 

Ye, therefore, beloved, seeing ye know those things before, be- 
ware LEST ye also, being LED AWAY WITH THE ERROR OF THE WICKED, FALL 
FROM YOUR OWN STEADFASTNESS. ThE GRACE OF OUR LORD JeSUS ChRIST 
BE WITH YOU ALL. AmEN. 



INDEX 



ABNOEMAL church power, 301 
Absolute unanimity not always at- 
tainable, 173 

Acts and examples of the apostles, church 
polity illustrated by, 280, 295 

Adjudicated cases, no record of^ kept in 
Baptist churches, 150 

Agreement among Baptists applies to 
fundamentals, 169 

Allegiance to one's church, what it sig- 
nifies, 463 

Amalgamation of churches is the nega- 
tion of God's government, 146 

Angels of the chui'ches, meaning of the 
term, 292 

Apostles, formulated no code of laws, 20 

• drilled the churches, 20 

— the fountains of truth, 261 

never wrote to the churches in 

their associational state, 287 

contention among, who was great- 



est, 420 

Apostolic times, churches at unity in, 210 
churches, complete in them- 
selves, 287 

succession, no such thing in 



church polity, 286, 413, 442, 541 
Apostacy, in church polity began in 

third century, 143 
Appeals from decisions of churches, 

none in church polity, 258 
Arbitration of the property rights of a 

divided church, 507 
Articles of faith, not the result of a 

preconceived design, 347 
the collected wisdom of all the 

churches, 348 
not the final statement of the 



truth, 349 
548 



Articles of faith, how generated in Bap- 
tist churches, 349, 356 

should be few in number, 353 

below the Scripture in point of 

verity, 357. 
Ark of the covenant, the depository of 

God's law, 162 
Associations, human contrivances, 130, 
314, 318 

may refuse to fellowship a church, 

259, 317 

utility of, 270, 319 

agents of the churches, 319 

deliberative and advisory bodies 

only, 319 

have no ecclesiastical powers, 



321 

— stand opposite to modern coun- 
cils, 323 

— churches may withdraw fi:om, 
317, 325 

should guard the doctrine of the 



churches, 328 
Associational power, dangers of, 178 
— relations, duty of churches to 



live in, 317 

government, weakness of, 328 



Authority of opinion, its influence in 
church polity, 164 

inter-church, must exist some- 

vrhere, 178. 

Autonomy of Baptist churches cannot 
be destroyed, 34 

Award of councils interprets them- 
selves, 274 

binding on all when consented 

to, 275 

Axioms of Baptist church polity, 48 



INDEX. 



549 



BAPTISTS, their love of the old paths, 
10 
appropriateness of their name, 42 

cannot act through representa- 
tives, 221 

duty of, to act out -what the apos- 
tles began, 228 

■ link themselves to the past, 10, 142 

■ measure duty by their own inter- 
pretation of the law, 297 

motto of, 31 

not allowed to choose their own 

church polity, 170 

should be obedient to the civil 

law, 247 

should not go to law with one 

another, 504, 508 

■ their right to revolt against 

church government, 451, 453, 462,, 
465, 467 

they have preserved the ancient 



forms, 31 

Baptist churches, fac-similes one of 
another, 220 

duty of, to preserve themselves, 

250 

church government, not one of 

'complexity, 32 

what necessary to change it, 145 

how far it reaches back, 145 

press, necessity for, 385 

publishing houses, 386 

schools should be under the con- 
trol of the denomination, 382 

young people, word of caution 

to, 239, 240 
Barnabas, how chosen an apostle, 293 
Beginning of the churches, 48 
Belief, necessity of, in church polity, 347 

common ground of, 360 

Bible, law of the, cannot be modified, 204 

rules in church polity are few, 120 

Bishops, college of, cannot make a min- 
ister, 410 

their disposition to usurp powers 

unscriptural, 414 

power of, to appoint and depose 

ministers, 435 

and pastors synonymous terms. 



442 



Body, church used in the similitude 

of a, 282 
Briggs, trial of, by the Presbyterians, 286 



CANDLESTICK, meaning of the term 

^ in Scripture, 262 

Canon of the Scriptures, how deter- 
mined, 185 

Catholics, history of their practices, 514 

their struggles to usui-p temporal 

power, 515 

being above the law are not ruled 



hy the law, 528 

— usurpation by them of a rule 
over the churches gives no right, 524 

— opposed to a general diffusion of 
learning:, 515 



what they have undertaken to 

decide by their councils, 185 

Change of church government treason 
against God, 40 

Christ alone our law-giver, 204 

his teaching concerning tradi- 
tions, 208 

not the author of confusion in 

church polity, 293 

gave no commission to make 



laws, 128 
Christianity, a new creation, 104 

part of the common law of the 

land, 502 
Christian ministry, their call and ordi- 
nation, 390 

equality of, 419 

iinity, views upon, 362 

Church, definition of the term, 74 

care in the constitution of, 458 

how formed, 18 

cannot rest upon human grounds, 

91 
cannot divest itself of its sover- 
eignty, 27 

must have power to bind and 

loose, 75 

is the authoritative interpreter 

of the Scriptures, 171, 183 

what it takes to constitute, 75 

likened unto a family, 76 

must develop from within, 77 



550 



INDEX. 



Church, the sole depository of all eccle- 
siastical power on earth, 78 

houses, for what purposes to be 

used, 485, 492 

universal, not a church proper, 

278 

how it originated, 279 

its powers defined in Scrip- 
ture, 280 

governments, three kinds of, 64 



Churches, when organized, 61 

highest and lowest development 

of, 59 
Cicero, his definition of the unwritten 

law, 68 
Classes in churches, unscriptural, 157 
Cooperation of churches, 310 
Commission to preach does not include 

the right to rule, 433 
CommoU law of the gospel defined, 9 
Common sense, usefulness of in church 

polity, 150 
Communion with outside churches not 

allowable, 237 
suspension from, in church polity, 

472 
Compensation of pastors, law of, 244 
Congregationalism and the State church, 

303 
Conservative, Baptist church govern- 
ment is, 115 
Constitution, church, no efficacy in a 

written one, 24 

is a divine work, 95 

Conventions, Baptist, powers and. duties 

of, 309 
churches may withdraw from 

with impunity, 317, 325 

have no ecclesiastical powers, 321 

weakness of their governments, 



328 



their usefulness, 319 

should guard the doctrine of the 

churches, 328 
Councils, their powers and duties, 249 

— definition of, 251 

not to be convened on every 

ground, 272 

■• findings of advisory only, 82, 273 

decisions of not laws, 252 



Councils, have no right to pronounce a 
judicial sentence, 452 

two occasions for their call, 251 

ex parte, 258, 272 

cannot execute their own find- 
ings, 252, 263 

decision of should be unanimous, 

256 

cannot settle the canon of Scrip- 
ture, 186 

7 cannot be called to settle doc- 



trine, 174 

— authority of, 83 

— no appeal from decision of, 258, 



259 



award of binding on all who join 

in their call, 274 
Councilors, how to be chosen, 253 
duties of, 257 



Covenant, church, how formed, 62 > 

the germ of the church, 47 

subject matter of, 69 

churches not wholly instituted 

by, 49 
the joint act of all uniting under 

it, 18 
stands in the place of a law, 

188 
Creeds, church, 340 
cannot be so framed as to exclude 

all error, 341 

obstruction to Christian unity, 343 

unknown in the early churches. 



346 



how generated, 348 



Customary law of the churches defined, 

110 
— when it becomes established in 

the churches, 119 

the first rule of the churches, 123 

must . not be confounded with 



traditions, 210 

Custom and usage the best interpreters 
of the Scriptures, 203 

must have coherence of princi- 
ple, 203 I 

marks of true, 211 

habit of following, 152 

how transmitted into church 



laws, 20, 148 



INDEX. 



651 



DECISIONS, no appeal from a 
church's, 258 
De jure and de facto forms of church 

polity defined, 15 
Denomination, authority of the whole, 

176 
heresy must be viewed from the 

standpoint of a, 371 
Denominational opinion, office work of, 

165 

intercourse, 312 

journals, usefulness of, 331 

should be few in number, 332 

enterprises, rivalry between, 333 

schools, work of in spreading the 

the truth, 382 
should be under Baptist control, 

336, 382 
Dependence of the ministry upon the 

bishops, 436 
Development, material and spiritual j 157 
of a church constant and gradual, 

213 
Discipline, civil courts cannot revise acts 

of, 495 

councils cannot inflict, 264 

Discords, evils of, in church polity, 459, 

500 
Discussion, free, should be allowed in 

every church, 383 
Dismission of members, rule as to, 246, 

272 
Distribution of ecclesiastical powers in 

church polity, 25, 107 
Disuse, customs and usages repealed by, 

136 
Divided church not a proper tribunal 

to try cases, 255 
Divine origin of the churches, 42 
right of the ministry, no such 

thing as in church polity, 443, 445 
Division of a Baptist church, 451 
in Baptist churches should occa- 
sion no alarm, 482 
Doctrine, diffused by the common law of 

the gospel, 169 
the denomination the guardian 

of, 328 

difficulty ofinnovating upon, 177 

that necessary to be believed, 341 



Doctrine, churches the judges of the true, 

358 
Duty of a church to preserve itself, 465 
of one church to another, 271 



EACH church has its own rules, 113 
Ecclesiastical powers not divided, 26 

given to churches and not to 

men, 76 

tendency of to increase, 133 

not lodged in the church univer- 



sal, 281 

creeds, 340 



Ecclesia, meaning of the term, 74 
Editors Baptist, how they should deport 

themselves, 388 
Education, general. Catholics opposed 

to, 515 
Elder, meaning of the term, 404 
English government, without a written 

constitution, 37, 121 
Enterprises denominational, how they 

should be managed, 332 
Episcopalians copy their form of polity 

from Catholics, 33 
Episcopal religion once established in 

many of the States, 303 

theory of church government, 87 

Episcopacy no more defensible than the 

papacy, 427, 429 
destitute of apostolic sanction, 



393 
Equality of the Christian ministry, 419, 
438 

in church government, 134 



Errors, in church polity, how they 
should be corrected, 123, 353 

to remove, requires time, 171 

no church free from, 173 

a church's, cannot become its 

own law, 200 

need the support of tradition, 207 

not necessarily heresies, 370 

diffused by inter-church commu- 
nion, 312 
liability of churches to fall into, 



461 



— charity towards those who com- 
mit, 376 

— perverted judgment leads to, 525 



552 



INDEX. 



Established religion set up in tlie United 
States, 303 

Ethics, meaning of the term, 218. 

just rules of, the law of Christ, 12 

• importance of understanding, 223 

the unwritten law of the churches, 

226 

rules of, how they came into be- 
ing, 228 

Ethical rules, scarcity of in the Bible, 
129, 219 

necessity of, in an unwritten 

church polity, 219 

Evangelist, ruling authority of, 403 

not an officer proper, 393 

Examples, we are taught by, in church 

polity, 97, 98, 130, 250, 295 
Excommunication, power and effect of, 

100 

' efficacy of, in church polity, 260 

Exparte councils, when to be called, 258, 

272' 

FACTS, church goyernment rests upon, 
13 
Factions, definition of, in church polity, 
460 

withdrawing from a church, 

should organize into churches, 458 

not always wrong, 476 

Baptist church polity apt to 



Free discussion should be allowed, 387 

Freedom, not absolute in church polity, 
51 

Freemen in Christ, 133 

Free Will Baptists, faithful to primitive 
church polity, 138 

Fun, a little, at the expense of his pre- 
eminence the Pope, 545 

Fundamental laws in church polity, 38 

cannot be changed, 17 

definition of, 486 

articles of faith, 368 

GOD, secret government of, over the 
churches, 191 
Good laws, the best legacy of Baptists, 
224 

offices, how far a church may in- 



breed, 477 



not proper parties to settle church 

troubles, 254 
Faith, a doctrine fundamental, 367 
effete formulas of, 344 

and knowledge, difference be- 
tween, 185 

much influenced by the opinions 

of others, 166 

and doctrine, a bond of union. 



'312 

False religion, how perpetuated, 359 
councils may be chosen to con- 
sider, 251 

church, needs to write many 



laws, 57 
Fellowship, none with those not of the 

church, 237 
Fraternal union of churches, 312 



trude its, 2G4 
Government, how the apostolic form of, 

has been obscured, 10 

church, rests on facts, 13 

three kinds of, 64 

hard to d.efine, 12, 132 

not a self-acting machine, 50 

right to change, not the subject 

of discussion, 184 

two tendencies of, 194 

illustrated by acts and examples 

of the apostles, 280 
Guides, spiritual, v/hat we owe to, 362 

HAYNES, D. C, his opinion of the 
rules of church polity, 120 
Hebrew kings, not set up by God, 302 
Heresy of heresies, 78 
definition of, 366, 372 

authority of councils, in cases 

of, 251 

to judge of belongs to the church, 

263 
its nature and how it should be 

treated, 365 

its relation to church polity, 



366, 376 

— most prolific in early times, 367 

— must be viewed from a denomi- 
national standpoint, 371 

— greater offence in some than in 
others, 374 



IKDEX. 



653 



Heresy, correction of, should be more 
moral than disciplinary, 375 

in a church operates as a forfeit- 
ure of church property, 489 

not fostered in Baptist church 



polity, 501 

Heretics and schismatics, difference be- 
tween, 475 

Heretical church may return to the faith 
of the gospel, 467 

Hiatus in the office of the pope, 530, 533 

Hierarchical church polity, 425 

Hiscox, Edward T., his church directory, 
155 

Historic churches, 144 

Holy legislative synod among Catholics, 
105 

Scriptures, the fountain of truth, 

344 



Spirit, the chief minister of the 

churches, 16 
Houses of worship, to what uses they 

may be put, 485 



TNDIVIDUALITY, impossible to di- 

J- vest one's self of, 220 

Independence, church, cannot be surren- 
dered, 283 

— : in what it consists in church 

polity, 25 

destroyed by the universal 



church, 300 
Infallible, churches are not, 261 
Infirmities of Baptist church polity, 266 
Innovation, church legislation is, 23 

Baptists have an aversion for, 33 

Institutional church government, 53, 90 
Institution, every Baptist church is an, 53 
Intelligence, need of in Baptist church 

polity, 227 
Inter-church law, code of, the need by 

Baptists, 224 

common law, defined, 315 

• ■ not binding except by consent, 

316 



dependence, 310 

Interpretation, Scripture, churches not 

infallible in, 170 
sign of true, 173 



Intervention, the doctrine of between 

churches, 264 
the exception and not the rule in 

church polity, 267 
not allowable, except for pacific 



purposes, 269 



JERUSALEM, council at, exercised 
no authority, 250 

JeT\dsh synagogues, 104 

dispensation, polity of no guide 

to Baptists, 394, 397, 398, 426 

Journals, Baptist, how they should be 
conducted, 388 

Judaism, not Christianity, 104 

Judges, civil, have no ecclesiastical juris- 
diction, 487 

slow to assume jurisdiction in 

church cases, 491 

there should be a common one 



in faith and practice, 173 
Jurisprudence, church, definition of, 9 

is the work of many ages, 45 

is a living principle, 30 

the philosophy of needs to be 

studied, 12 

codification of, for use of Baptists, 



225 



KEYS, what is meant by the term, 421 
the giving of them to Peter^ 

420 



— received by Peter representa- 
tively, 421 

— of the church, no such thing as. 



422 

Kingdom of God, meaning of the ex- 
pression, 280, 283 

and the church, two different 



things, 426 
Knowledge and ignorance, difference be- 



LANDMAEKS, true, how known, 208, 
209 
Latitudinarian construction of church 

polity, 88, 307 
Law and religion, their appointment 
from God, 488 



554 



IXDEX. 



Law, Cicero's definition of, 58 

need of, in the churches, 222 

church, is a record of what is and 

has been, 154 

is posterior to facts, 152 

is rooted and grounded in the 

Scriptures, 162 
custom and usage stand in place 

of, 212 

two kinds of, 485 

should remain unwritten, 22 

of the gospel, ministers are made 

by the, 411 

duty of the churches to observe, 



52, 462 
Law-making power vested in each 

church, 216 
Laymen enj oy fuller liberty of conscience 

than ministers, 373 
Laying on of the hands of the presby- 
tery, 392 
Leading men, their part in church gov- 
ernment, 479 
Legitimacy of church polity, 15 
Liberty, religious, dangers to, 15 

exists only in a free church, 24, 25 

Licensing ministers, custom of, 391 
Likeness between Baptist churches, 140 
Limits of church government, 72 
Litigation between Baptists unscrip- 

tural, 511 
Local church, all ecclesiastical power 

lodged in, 16, 62 
limited to as many as can assem- 
ble to hear the gospel, 291 

the apostles wrote to them as 



such, 261 
Lord's Supper and Baptism are divine 

institutions, 54 
Love for our church, 231 
office work of, in church polity, 

151 
Lycurgus left unwritten laws, 57 



MACHINERY of church polity, 16 
Maintenance of pastors, 245 
Magna Charter of Baptist churches, 36 
Majority rule, when first operative, 61 
rights inherent in, 259 



Majority of a church the ruling authority, 

246 
all rightfdl authority, is exercised 

by, 180 

may be resisted, 180 

right to rule, is limited by the 



law of the gospel, 234 
Making a new church, 31 
Man, not a creator of church polity, 94 
should not in all things follow 



his own liberty, 351 
Manners, slight corruption of no cause 

of schisms, 454, 456 
Matthias, called to fill Judas' place, 24 
how elected, 232 



Members, church, sometimes a law unto 
themselves, 125 

free from man-made law, 129 

above and before the churches, 



79 
Meetings, extra-ecclesiastical, 180 
Messengers, church, duties of, 179, 182 
Methodists have copied their polity 

from the Catholics, 33 
Ministry, their call, ordination, powers 

and duties, 390 
no ruling power in themselves, 



395, 399, 406 



— their relation to church polity, 234 

— God calls, but the church or- 
dains, 424 

— do not exist by divine right alone, 
87, 235 

— not their province to organize 
churches, 262 

— their right of judgment, 355 

— what they obligate themselves 
to preach, 370, 373 

— - as ordaining presbyters, 387 

— all churches have a property in, 
392 

— two kinds of, 391 

— have a ministerial and not a 
magisterial power, 394, 396 

— should not preach politics, 241 

— how made under the law of the 



gospel, 441, 444 
Ministerial power, true source of, 449 
Minority, importance of, in church pol- 
ity, 233 



INDEX. 



555 



Minority, their duty to yield in cliurch 

polity, 455 
Minorities, difficulty in disciplining 

* large, 457, 471 
Moral obligation of councils, 274 
Moses, explicit in his laws, 95 
Multiplicity of laws, evils of, 124 



NAMELESS churches, 43 
National church under the Jews, 
300 
Necessary doctrine to be believed, 841 
Necessity of a belief in religion, 347 
Neutrality, duty of churches to observe, 

464 
New articles of faith should not be mul- 
tiplied, 347 
Nice, council of, what it established, 185 
Noetians, revolt of, from priestly power, 

338 
No lord paramount in church polity, 434 



OBEDIENCE to secular law enjoined, 
247 
Office, ministerial, a trust, 235 
Oneness of will, faith and practice, 52, 

213 
Opinions, marks of trustworthy, ] 67 
concensus of, the guide of the 

churches, 178 
of ministers, their influence upon 

the young, 167 
formed often upon authority of 

others, 164 

prevalent, not always sound, 174 

not church law, 158 

pass into church law by voting. 



232 



conflict of, 480 



Oral teaching in early churches pre- 
vailed, 45, 56 
Organic union, none among the early 
churches, 84 

unit, every church is an, 21 

Organized missionary work, 246 
Organization of churches, two laws gov- 
erning, 67 
Origin of the churches, 49 



Orthodoxy, the true basis of Christian 

union, 363 
in what it consists, 368 



PAPAL church government, 513 
see, Peter never filled the, 

439 
Parties, none in Baptist church polity, 

478 
Pastors, chosen agents of the churches, 

222 
and people, relation between. 



sacred, 244 

law of compensation of, 244 



Pastorate, changes in, 243 

jumpers, 244 

Paul, the prince of apostles, 427 

had no power to coerce his 



brethren, 271 
Peace should not be cultivated at the 

expense of the truth, 354 
should subsist between the 

churches, 474 
Pedo-baptist polity built up by church 

legislation, 120 

writings on church polity, 12 



Peter, his confession as to Christ, 421, 
422 

his acts compared with those of 



the pope of to-day, 523 
Pillar and ground of the truth, 172 
Polity, church, a gradual growth, 17 
and religion should not be 



blended in church law, 127 



church, a rich inheritance, 158 

Political preachers, 240 
Pontifical councils, 105, 185 
Popedom, not conferred upon Peter, 428 
Popular forms of church polity, no clash 

in, 136 
Power ecclesiastical, where it resides, 60 

limited to moral ends, 248 

three elements of, in church pol- 
ity, 107_ _ ^ 
no division of, in church polity. 



107 



its tendency to escape from the 



many to the few, 133 

— exercised by councils, 272 



556 



INDEX. 



Power, ministerial cannot be transmit- 
ted, 424 
Post-apostolic polities, how formed, 214 
Preaching, three things involved in, 281 
Precedents, church, considered, 194 

have no binding authority, 196, 



199 



make no church law, 202 



Presbytery, ordaining, 387 

Present, the, must be explained by the 

past, 219 
Press the religious, 383 
Priest-craft, obstruction to Christian 

unity, 363 
Priestly authority, revolts from, 338 

government has no counterpart 

in the Scripture, 447 
Primitive beginning of church polity, 

143 
Private opinion, contrary to the stand- 
ards, not allowed, 250 
Property rights of a divided church, 484 

in a church is a trust in law, 49 

Protests, members may make, in 

churches, 66 
Protestantism, but reformed popery, 305 
Publishing houses, Baptist, utility of, 386 
Pulpit, non-affiliation, the common law 

of the churches, 237 
Purity of doctrine, in keeping of the de- 
nomination, 328 

READY-MADE creeds, obscurities in, 
344 

church polity, already provided, 

170 
Eeason, when it fails the law fails, 299 
Eeception of members, rule as to, 246 
Eeconciliation, councils of, 406 
Reformation, church government is not 

a, 14 
Religious liberty, duty of Baptists to 

maintain, 25, 184 

press should guard the truth, 383 

Religion and church polity, blended, 191 
and law have their appointment 

from God, 488 
Representatives, church can have no, 93 
Resolutions of censure, reprehensible, 

813 



Revolt from priestly authority, 338 
Ritualistic ceremonies. Baptists free 

from, 127 
Rules, importance of, 51 

how formulated, 221 

■ Bible ftirnishes but few, 108, 120 

were unwritten in the begin- 
ning, 109 

unwritten lie dormant until 



needed, 118 
Ruler, Peter performed not the office 

of a, 527 
Ruling elders, what is meant by, 399, 



400, 405 



ministry, ambition of, 435 

a CHISM, definition of, 454, 471, 493 
^ Schismatics, who are, 456, 463 
Schools of divinity, errors are apt to 

spring up in, 374 
denominational, should be under 

Baptist control, 336, 382 
Scriptures, how they became church 

law, 70, 184 
interpreted by the local church, 



172 



canon of, how determined, 186 
basis of all law, 117 



Sign of true Bible interpretation, 173 
Silent changes, to be dreaded in church 

polity, 194 
Similarity, three points of, between Bap- 
tist and the primitive churches, 11 1 
Sister churches should not intermeddle 

with one another, 486 
Societies, Baptist, extra ecclesiastical 

bodies, 237 

source of alarm, 238 

Sovereignty, church, cannot be divided, 

26, 35, 107, 141, 216, 229 
Standard of authority should be erected 

in church polity, 189 
Stability, characteristic of Baptist church 

polity, 139 
Standing councils. Baptists have no, 81 
State and church, union of, 304 
Strict discipline, day of, passing away, 

468 
Succession, apostolic, views upon, 236, 

262,413, 641 



II5n>EX. 



557 



Succession, church, the historian must 

prove, 141 
of ecclesiastical principles and 

doctrines, never ceasing, 35, 140, 365 



TAXATION, cannot be imposed for 
religious purposes, 248 
Temporal dominion, struggle for by 

Catholics, 515 
Terra Firma of church polity, 51 
Text-book writers, their share in church 

polity, 149 

opinions of, deferred to, 171 

should be consulted, 43, 188 

Things necessary to be believed, 840 
Titus, Paul's direction to, concerning 

ordaining elders, 408, 411 
Tradition, has no place in church law, 

204 

sample of, given, 205 

how known to be true, 206 

not the same as custom, 210 

is born of ignorance, 215 

Traditional power of authority, 213 

teaching of Christ, 208 

Trustees, of church property, have no 

estate in same, 485 

courts will raise up, to hold 

church property, 489 

Trustworthy authority, in the interpre- 
tation of the Scriptures, 164 
importance of, in church polity. 



192 



true signs of, 169 



Truth, the only basis of Christian unity, 
362 

the church, the ground and pil- 
lar of, 89 

mixed with error, no less repre- 
hensible, 379 

True churches, patterns of, never vary, 13 

polity of, not open to choice, 13 

UGLY side of Baptist church polity, 
481 
Ulpian, his definition of jurisprudence, 

105 
Uniformity and variety, in church laws, 
27 



Unity, Christian, views upon, 362 

human creeds an obstruction to, 

343 
Union, church, must be voluntary, 72 

associational, necessary to the 

well being of the churches, 310 
Uniformity of doctrine, necessity of, 360 
Universal church, not the seat of eccle- 
siastical power, 278 

evils of a government by the, 423 

false glare of, 327 

no example of, in Scriptures, 281 

the link that unites church and 



state, 19 

not a creation of Christ, 520 



Usages, how transmitted into laws, 147 

best interpreters of the Scrip- 
tures, 172 

Usurpation cannot make a minister, 409, 
440, 443. 

Unwritten church law, the heritage of 
Baptists alone, 126 



VANITY of creed making, 343 
Variation, hurtful and hateful in 
church polity, 219. 
Vote, every member should, 232 
Voting, office work of, in church polity, 
232 



WEAKNESS of associational govern- 
ment, 328 
Well ordered churches, usefulness of, 223 
Withdrawal, not allowable in church 
government, 18 

when permissible at all, 467 



Without a model there can be no re- 
formation, 99 

Women should not preach the gospel, 
242 

their worth to the churches, 242 



Written laws, the dangers of, in church 
polity, 121 

Christ might have established, if 



necessary, 122 
Writings of the apostles, show no traces 
of the episcopacy, 432 



